


Ships Adrift in a Strong Tide

by nightsstarr



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: F/M, oneshots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-31
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-11-30 22:06:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 24,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11472624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightsstarr/pseuds/nightsstarr
Summary: A collection of unrelated oneshots about the son of Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul and the daughter of Nightwing and Starfire. Some are AUs and some are more loyal to canon but all of them are very self-indulgent. At least one kiss per chapter guaranteed because I have no self-control





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Except I think for Claws and Crossbows, this is the first demonfire drabble I ever wrote

Twenty year old Damian Wayne removed his bat-eared cowl in the sanctity of the Batcave. He felt the annoying urge in the back of his jaw to yawn. Irked, he gritted his teeth together to resist it. 

“Nice job tonight.”

Damian turned to his adoptive older brother. “I know.” He removed the cape and utility belt, reaching for the pair of comfortable pajamas Alfred left for him.

“You’re so comfortable in the cowl. Going back to the Robin gig after this must seem… childish.” Nightwing tossed his domino mask unceremoniously on the ground, yawning. 

The young Wayne scowled at the offending cloth and folded his cape meticulously. “It doesn’t matter to me which persona I improve.”

Nightwing shrugged and turned to his own pile of clothing. “I’m just saying.” He lifted his shirt at the hem and Damian kicked off his boots. “Filling in while your dad goes to his fancy parties must kinda suck.”

“It’s for the good of the entire operation. It has little to do with my feelings on the matter.” Spandex bottoms off, sweatpants on. Resist the urge to yawn.

“Don’t you want to move up in the ranks, though? Going from Robin to Batman back to Robin… seems like a downgrade.”

“There can be only one Batman at a time. I have no desire to usurp my father’s mantle.” Damian hooked his fingers under the black Kevlar-Nomex blend and pulled it over his head. He stretched his back, testing the soreness of a muscle he pulled from getting jerked around on the jump line. It would hurt tomorrow, but for now it hardly ached. 

“Hey! Are those scratch marks?”

Damian glared at Dick, now dressed in flannel pants similar to his own and a thin t-shirt, over his shoulder. “What?”

“Down your back,” Dick elaborated, stepping closer to his brother. 

“I don’t know. Possibly,” the twenty-year-old mumbled, grabbing his shirt and tugging it on, covering the offending marks defensively. 

“Wait, wait.” Dick lifted Damian’s shirt over his shoulder blades. “Those aren’t from a fight.”

“Stop that, Grayson.” Damian swatted his brother’s hand away and pulled his shirt down, fixing him with a glare as he turned to keep his back sheltered. “It’s nothing.”

“Nothing, huh?” A knowing grin flashed across Dick’s face. “Looks to me like Little D’s got himself a girlfriend.”

Covering his fierce blush with a scowl, Damian grumbled, “Don’t call me that.”

“You do!”

“Don’t… be so excited about it. It’s annoying.”

“Who is it? How did you meet her? How do you meet anybody, actually? All you ever do is skulk around the Manor. Does Bruce know?”

“Grayson,” Damian snapped. “No one knows. I’m not even sure that she—”

“Are you kidding me?” Dick spluttered incredulously. “Girl marks you up like that and it’s not even official?”

An icy glare swept over Damian’s features before he returned to a largely indifferent, if slightly annoyed, look. “I am not going to discuss this with you any further.” He began walking toward the elevator that brought him up to the living quarters of the manor. 

…

The next morning—morning in the relative terms of night-prowling vigilantes—Damian was hoping that his boisterous older brother would have forgotten about their previous night’s exchange. 

No such luck. 

Dick, Damian, and Dick’s daughter Mar'i were seated at the first three seats of the long table that sat in the Persian-rugged, French-windowed dining room. 

“Another serving of eggs, Master Dick?” Alfred asked as he put another plate in front of Damian.

“No, thanks,” Dick answered around his newspaper. 

“And for you, Miss Mar'i?”

“No thanks, Alf. I already had breakfast since I got up at an actual human hour. I’m just keeping these two some company. I’ll take some tea, though,” the green-eyed, dark-haired girl chirped. 

“At a human hour,” Damian echoed, assuming a bored monotone. “Interesting remark, for someone who is only half so.”

Narrowing her eyes at him, Mar'i shot back, “And yet I’m better at being a functioning human being than you are. How ‘bout that.”

“Ah. It is lovely to see the two of you getting along so well,” Alfred quipped, shaking his head. 

“Oh, Alfred, by the way,” Dick began, “did you know about the latest development in our budding Dark Knight’s social life?”

“Is the latest development an emergence of a social life to begin with?” Alfred asked, straight faced.

“Hey,” Damian interrupted, startled. “There’s no development. There’s nothing—”

“He got a girlfriend!” Dick announced gleefully in spite of his little brother’s protestations.

“It’s not anything that—”

“My word, Master Damian. That is impressive. Shall you bring the young lady for dinner?”

“No, Pennyworth, stop that. There won’t be any—”

“Girlfriend?” Mar'i echoed, tilting her head. “Really?”

“I never said—I mean—”

“Is she pretty?” Mar'i questioned, smirking.

“I—of course she—” Damian spluttered, his face flaming. Going silent, he snapped his mouth shut and stood so quickly his chair tipped over behind him. Without another word he exited the dining room, fists balled at his sides. 

Behind him, he could hear Dick sigh and say, “Guess that’s my fault. I’ll go talk to him.”

“No, Daddy, that’s okay. I’ll talk to him,” Mar'i offered. 

Damian ducked into the sun room, not that it was very sunny thanks to the habit Gotham’s skies kept of being filled with thick, heavy clouds. He was hoping that she’d think he went to his room, but she apparently knew him better than he thought. 

“Damian,” she called soothingly as he flopped onto the couch. 

“That… Your father is… I didn’t…”

“Would you calm down?” She swatted at his feet and he bent his knees obediently, giving her room to sit at the edge of the couch. “Come on. Don’t be all pouty.”

He responded by crossing his arms over his chest and pointedly looking away from her. 

Mar'i sighed and leaned her elbows on his knees. “How’d he find out anyway?”

Propping himself up on his elbows so that Mar'i received the full force of his glare, he told her, “He saw the scratches you left on my back, woman.”

Mar'i’s mouth dropped open and, aghast, she covered it with both hands. “Oh my god,” she squeaked, “no he didn’t.”

“Are you implying that I made that up?”

“Oh god. How are we going to tell him now? He’ll know that we’ve been… you know… sleeping together.”

“I did tell you that you should have told him before that,” Damian pointed out crossly. 

“I know, I know. It’s all my fault,” Mar'i lamented. “Oh, Damian, I’m sorry.”

He sat up and cupped her cheek in his hand. “I thought you’d be mad about the girlfriend part,” he admitted.

“Really? Why?”

Dropping his hand, he looked away from her. “We never really talked about it.”

To his surprise, she giggled at that. “You silly boy. When were we going to talk about it? Just because you never said, 'I want you to be my girlfriend’ or 'Do you wanna go out with me?’ doesn’t mean we don’t have a real relationship or that I don’t know that you like me.”

“I never said that,” he said quickly. 

She quirked an eyebrow at him. “Then say you don’t.”

Instead of saying anything, he leaned forward and pressed his lips against hers softly. 

“Easy there, Wonder Boy,” Mar'i giggled. “Don’t forget what started this.” She curled her hand and raked her fingers through the air like claws.

“Cut your nails, woman.”

She grabbed a throw pillow and threw it at Damian’s face. “I have another solution that involves quite a bit more space between us at all times.”

Damian smirked and wrapped his arms around her waist. “Do you want to be my girlfriend?” he whispered into her hair.

Mar'i threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

“Good heavens.”

They flinched apart, startled, to find Alfred standing in the doorway. “My mildest of apologies for interrupting the both of you, but Master Bruce has returned from spending the night with Miss Selina. He’s requesting your presence in the dining room, Master Damian, and I expect he’d like to see Miss Mar'i as well. Although not engaged in this particular activity.”

“Pennyworth,” Damian called, standing, “please don't—”

“Sir. If there is one field where I have more than proven my adequacy, it is in keeping secrets.”


	2. Sticks and Stones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: One character comes to the defense of another character when they’re insulted.

Cerdian was having a bad day. True, he wasn’t Mar'i’s favorite guy on a good day, but he was decent company and he had good taste in movies. 

Today, though, he wasn’t good company. He was crotchety. It was probably because of the oil spill he’d been helping his father and other Atlanteans clean up all weak. 

Lian was the usual leader of the Titans. She wasn’t in today, though, which meant that Damian took up the role. He’d probably be leader if it weren’t for the fact that the west-coast base caused too many conflicts with his duties back in Gotham. 

Maybe Cerdian was used to being in charge of himself and the other teenage Atlanteans without being ordered around at the spill. Maybe the fact that he didn’t see eye-to-eye with Damian made it that much worse. Long story short, Damian told Cerdian to zig and he zagged. The zag messed with the entire operation and Gemini got away. 

Jai, Iris, Jade, Luke, and Zatara stayed out of the way upon coming back to the tower, but Mar'i didn’t want Damian to go too hard on Cerdian. Which is how she ended up in the middle of their argument.

“You not only screwed up a very basic, easy to follow plan, but you put the team in jeopardy.”

“I could have frozen her on my own, you didn’t need to throw your fancy gadgets around to do it.” Cerdian scowled at the fifth Robin. “Besides, all your stupid bat-toys look the same, I didn’t know it was an ice-‘rang.”

“You didn’t need to know. All you needed to do was hang back. You couldn’t wait for five seconds, and now there’s a shape-shifting, psychopathic–”

“Aw, c'mon, D,” Mar'i soothed, and both boys broke their mutual glares to frown at the half-Tamaranean. “We’re not back home. The guys here need more direction from you in the field. It’s not as though–”

“Shut it, you pupil-less alien freak,” Cerdian growled. “I can handle Boy Asshat on my own.”

Mar'i froze, the words of her friend stinging more than he could know they would.

“What did you call her?” Damian growled softly, the way a lion might growl before it goes in for a real roar.

“Wait, Damian, don't—”

Her attempt at peacekeeping was ignored by both boy’s. Cerdian, having successfully stuck a nerve with Damian, raised his chin defiantly and clearly repeated, “No-eyed alien freak bitch sticking her–”

Before either Mar'i or Cerdian could react, Damian darted forward and sent two strong punches to the Atlantean prince’s face. He grabbed the scruff of Cerdian’s unitard and in the same soft but dangerous voice, he challenged, “What did you say about her?”

Letting blood from his damaged nose drip down his face, Cerdian sneered and said, “Fake tan skinned, slutty—”

With an angry shout, Damian pounded Cerdian face-first into the wall, smashing his forehead into the reinforced steel and punching him in the stomach.

“Stop it, Damian!” Mar'i shouted, using her alien strength to pull him away from the beaten boy. Cerdian leaned on the wall, wiping in an undignified manner at his nose and holding his stomach.

“Say something else, fish-breath, I implore you. I’d love a good reason to knock you around.”

“That’s enough,” Mar'i hissed, pushing him behind her. He dug his heels into the floor but without using a weapon or tool to get the edge, he couldn’t stop her from carting him around thanks to her inhuman strength. She pushed him toward the doors, grabbing a box of tissues as she passed it and throwing it at Cerdian before dragging the struggling Boy Wonder into the hallway and locking the door behind her.

“Calm down,” she scolded him sternly.

“I couldn’t very well allow him to say those things,” Damian snapped, narrowing his eyes at Mar'i.

“What Cerdian or anyone else says about me is none of your business.” Leaning against the door, she buried her face in her hands. “God, Damian. That’s embarrassing.” She looked up at him. “I don’t need you to protect me. I’m fine on my own, no matter what you, my father, or my grandfather think.”

“You forgot your idiot uncle,” Damian grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest, “and the ever-fearsome Oracle.”

“Dammit, Damian, I don’t care who tells you to protect me. I don’t need you to look after me, okay?”

“How very brave of you, but terribly misguided. I didn’t do it to protect you, even though I’m sure the fact that he played on your genetics, which you’re understandably self-conscious about, must have made you quite upset.”

Surprised, the half-Tamaranean gaped at him. “Then why on Earth did you find it necessary to break his nose?!”

“Because he made me angry. Attacking you for your genetics is as unfair as someone attacking me for mine.” The ex-heir to the League of Assassins ran a hand through his hair uncomfortably and Mar'i bowed her head to show that she understood. “You are not a freak, Grayson. You are an asset to this team and to my father. Anyone who thinks otherwise will need to answer to me.”

After a moment of shocked silence from Mar'i, she managed, “Um, wow, thanks. But could you use your words instead of your fists next time?”

Damian shrugged. “Possibly. Although the gill-head is lucky I did not have my steel within easy grasp.”

Mar'i rolled her eyes and sarcastically muttered, “That’s sweet.”

A faint blush tinged the boy’s cheeks and he insisted, “It was not a gesture of kindness. Don’t begin thinking I actually like you.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” She smirked and shook her head. “Anyway, D, lemme go make sure you didn’t actually break Cerd’s nose.” Before returning to the operations room where Cerdian was likely nursing a sore stomach and an injured face, Mar'i caught Damian in a quick hug that made him lean away from her and hold his arms away as though she were contagious.

“Stop that,” Damian mumbled. “I told you, I wasn’t being nice.”

“I heard ya, D.” She stood back and smiled at him. “But sometimes when you don’t mean to be nice, it means more than if you were nice on purpose.”

“That is the single most idiotic thing I have ever heard.”

Mar'i grinned and stood on her tiptoes. She placed a quick kiss on Damian’s cheek, which made him squeeze one eye closed. Without another word, she flounced back into the ops room and grabbed a package of peas from the freezer.

Cerdian was leaning against the wall, one hand holding a wad of tissues up to his nose and the other wrapped around his stomach.

“Oh, Cerdian,” Mar'i sighed mournfully. She batted his hand holding the wad of tissues away from his face and she lifted the frozen packet of peas to his jaw, which sported a darkening bruise.

He watched her hands quietly, wincing as she dabbed at the area around his nose covered in drying blood with clean tissues. There was a good chance his nose was broken, actually. It was still bleeding alarmingly fast.

“We better get you to the medical bay, Cerd.”

“’m dorry,” the Atlantean mumbled.

“I pretty much get why you’re so cranky, but that doesn’t make what you said okay.” Mar'i pushed him away from the wall, steering him toward the door. “Especially coming from you. I know you get enough of people calling you gill-head and fish-face and sardine-breath. I thought you know what it was like, Cerdian.”

The doors slid open as the teenagers approached them, revealing Damian still occupying the hallway. He was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. His raised hood magnified his glare, which he directed at Cerdian after glancing at Mar'i for a lingering moment.

He didn’t follow them to the medical bay, or if he did he didn’t want them to know about it. It was impossible to tell with Damian. 

“Didn’t bean it to bake you bad,” Cerdian offered as an apology. “Wanted to piss Dabian off.”

“Just the kind of sensitive apology a girl wants to hear.” The doors to the medical bay slid open in front of them and Mar'i directed Cerdian to sit on the cot while she texted Menagerie, residential empath and the team’s medical expert, to help her out. “And as for pissing Damian off… Well, congrats.”

In a burst of smoke and the screech of a raven, Menagerie appeared in front of the two teens. “What happened to you?” she asked incredulously, taking Cerdian’s chin in her hand.

“He got in a cockfight with Damian,” Mar'i answered, rolling her eyes.

“…Oh. That explains that." 

"It wasn’t a–!”

Before Cerdian could finish his protest, Mar'i interrupted. “Fix him up?”

“Broken nose, bruised jaw. No problem,” Menagerie answered.

“Thanks,” Mar'i said, and she ducked of the room.

“Where’re you going?” Menagerie called curiously.

“To find Damian.”


	3. In which Damian gets slapped

She stood in front of him, the tips of her hair literally burning, eyes glowing slightly.

“Grayson,” Damian began, his hands curled into nervous fists at his sides, “I understand that you are angry, but—”

He didn’t get to finish. The crack of skin on skin rang through the hallway and both Dick and Alfred stared at them, wide eyed and unmoving.

Damian Wayne had been slapped before. It was unpleasant, but generally what bothered him was the humiliation of the act and not the pain, which was minimal.

Damian Wayne had never been slapped by an enraged half-Tamaranean, gifted with super-strength and a certain amount of emotional sway over him.

Unsure of what to do, he gritted his teeth, caught halfway between indignant protesting and undignified begging for forgiveness. Pain of a surprising degree radiated from his cheek, and he fought an instinctive urge to cover the tender area with his palm.

“You stupid, arrogant bastard,” she snarled, and tears pooled in her eyes. “I thought you were dead!” Her voice cracked twice in the short sentence, her voice thick with emotion.

Aside from an overwhelming sense of self-loathing, Damian wasn’t sure what to feel. She was obviously angry but she was also on the verge of tears, and he didn’t know whether to placate her or comfort her.

“I—” he began unsurely, but before he got any further Mar’i wound her fingers in his shirt and pulled him, closing the half-step of space between them.

A searing kiss silenced him before he could even attempt to explain himself. That was searing in the literal sense; Mar’i had a hard time regulating her body temperature when her emotions spiked. She stepped back from him, and in the space of a few moments he saw countless emotions display themselves in her shining eyes.

She spun away from him suddenly and ran up the stairs, presumably to her room.

Now that she was gone, he cupped his palm over his sore cheek and turned to Dick and Alfred. Neither of whom, he noted for use in the future, had offered any sort of help.

“I don’t…” he stuttered, feeling helpless. “Should I find her?”

“No,” Dick rushed to say. “No, don’t do that. I’ll… try to talk to her. If she’s anything like her mother, I suggest staying out of starbolt range. Far out of range.”


	4. Snowfall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Damian and Titus pick up Mar'i from her class at Gotham University.

“Titus,” Damian calls, and he takes the leash off the hook on the wall near the near the door.

Titus thumps his tail in reply, sitting obediently at the young man’s feet. Damian clips the leash onto the Great Dane’s collar and swings his apartment door open, locking it behind him as he pulls on his yellow and black jacket.

He stops at a small coffee shop that he likes because the red headed girl who works there doesn’t flirt with him and she always gives Titus a treat. He orders two coffees, which the barista serves him with a knowing smile in two to-go cups.

Snow is falling so thick it looks like the sky, which is a unicolor gray sheet, is falling down piece by piece. Sounds are muffled and people are scarce. It’s likely that the roads will close after very long, not that there any many cars out now.

Damian enters the Gotham University campus, as he’s done at this time for about the past month, and he sits on the bench he’s used to taking up. Titus sits in front of him, head bent against the wind, And Damian sets one coffee on the bench next to him so he can scratch Titus behind the ear.

Classes all let out at the same time, and students mill around him without giving him much thought. The benefit of being famous for your net worth instead of for your television show or movie or song is that people don’t generally spot you in a crowd unless you draw attention to yourself.

The crowd thins as people leave and Titus begins to get anxious, but he is obedient and he simply stands in front of Damian.

He finds her in the swarm of students, dark hair curling gently down to her mid back, freckled with flakes of snow, a scarf thrown about her neck and hat pulled over her head, even though she needs neither, her jacket unzipped, revealing a brightly colored sweater. Boots scuffle over pavement as she weaves through people in her attempt to make her way over to them.

“Hi Titus, baby,” Mar’i coos at the dog, who sits and thumps his tail, sending powdery snow over Damian’s boots. She kneels in front of him and pets him, and, judging by how Titus scoots closer to her, she warms his body with a minor charge of energy to her fingers.

“Tt,” Damian sulks, annoyed at being ignored in favor of Titus.

“Oh, hush, you,” she says. When she glances up at him, her eyes sharpen with concern and her mouth twitches into a frown. “What are you doing, dressed like that?” she scolds.

“I am dressed perfectly fine for the weather,” he tells her, rolling his eyes.

“Um, hat?” she prods. “Gloves? Honestly, Damian, it’s like you want to get sick.”

“Remind me again why it is I come here to meet you,” he sulks as he stands, and he holds her coffee out for her.

“Because you love me?” she asks, grinning and she cups the drink between her hands, breathing in the smell of coffee.

“Hm,” he answers.

“Fine,” she pouts, “don’t say it.” She reaches into his hand, her fingers warm against his, and she snatches the leash from him. “I’ll move out and I’m taking the dog. Titus loves me, don’t you, baby?”

At the changed tone of her voice, Titus wags his tail happily and she sticks her tongue out at Damian. “He says he loves me.”

“He wags his tail at Drake,” he reminds her, surly. “I would not take it to heart.”

“And now you doubt our love!” she wails.

Tired of this, Damian takes the wrist of the hand that’s holding the leash and pulls her close to him. “I got you coffee,” he points out.

“Oh, gee, you’re right. Wagging tails is puppy-speak for ‘I love you’; sulking and fetching coffee is Dami-speak for ‘I love you’.”

He sighs, a puff of his breath forming in front of his face, and he mumbles, “I love you.”

“Hmmm,” Mar’i hums, contemplating. “It’s a start, I guess.” She giggles at him when he glares at her and she laces her fingers through his, warming them to the point that Damian thinks that she may have had a point about gloves, and she says, “Love you, too.” She stands on her tiptoes and presses a kiss against his lips. “Let’s go home,” she says, and she touches his cheek with her fingers and trails them down to the collar of his shirt. “Get you warmed up,” she adds, a warm edge to her voice that makes the edges of his mouth quirk up a little.

He tightens his fingers around hers as she spins around, a whirl of dark hair and curls, and tugs him behind her.


	5. Mistletoe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mar'i’s love of Christmas decorations begins to grate on Damian’s nerves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a cute little Christmas story that, like all Christmas fanfic, is equal parts shipping and cliche Christmas-themed cuteness. Don’t take it too seriously, I just wanted them to kiss under some mistletoe.

Of course she wouldn’t skip a beat from the transition from Thanksgiving to Christmas. It wasn’t in the nature of people like her - cheery people who got excited at the prospect of family gathering and gift giving.

Overnight, the Manor transformed from its usual neat grandness into the back of a Christmas postcard. Wreathes ornamented nearly every door in the mansion, garland wrapped around stair banisters, kitschy decorations of pale dolls with glassy eyes and wide smiles around every corner. She even went so far as to hang rows of soft yellow Christmas lights on the walls.

It was all very annoying.

What was undoubtedly the worst part of all this, however, was the mistletoe hung on doorframes and places in the hallways that were susceptible to traffic.

Of all the pointless holiday rituals - and there were many - mistletoe ground against the Wayne heir’s nerves the most.

This shrub was the cause for annoying displays, romantic in nature, among the more idiotic members of his family. That included, of course, Drake and Brown, Grayson and the alien woman, and, to his immense chagrin, his own father and Kyle. Even Wilkes used it as an opportunity to engage in flirtations with Little.

Everywhere he turned he was surrounded by sanctimonious idiots, nowadays.

One of the things Grayson had not done on her own was the Christmas tree, as that was to be done by the entire family. Even Todd was allowed in the house to participate. As annoyed as Damian was by Mar'i’s pathological need to excessively decorate for Christmas, he would have preferred she embraced her pathology wholly and put up the tree by herself, as well.

As it was, Damian was interrupted while polishing his sword, usually an unforgivable offense. Pennyworth did seem somewhat apologetic, although of course he would not take no for an answer.

When Damian pushed open one of the doors, he found himself in the obnoxiously decorated family room, where a huge evergreen had already been placed in a stand. Pine needles littered the ground in a trail that led from what he assumed had to be the front door, and Damian silently cursed his habit of not wearing shoes inside.

“Hey!” the youngest Grayson greeted him, smiling widely and wearing a knitted sweater. “Glad you decided to surface from your cave.”

It was not a decision on his part as much as it was Pennyworth’s decision, but there was no need to correct her. “Yes,” he said dryly. “I see you’ve turned the place into a hazard for electrical fires. Well done.”

“Thanks!” was her genuine response as she beamed at him.

“Uh oh, kiddies, don’t look now,” the familiar voice of Jason Todd warned them, laughter beneath its grave surface.

“What are you drivelling about now?” Damian demanded, bored.

Shooting him a toothy smirk, Todd leaned back against a portion of the wall that was not covered in Mar'i’s handiwork a d pointed casually at the ceiling.

Mistletoe dangled from the vaulted ceiling above Damian’s head.

Mar'i was giggling as though this were a well intentioned joke rather than borderline sexual harassment.

“Touch me,” he growled at her, “and you’ll have a fresh puncture wound to nurse.”

“Oh, relax,” she said between giggles. “It’s supposed to be fun! You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”

“What’s the problem, Wayne? Not your type? Should I find Wilkes for ya?”

Damian turned his best glare on Jason and silently contemplated tearing the string of lights from the wall and strangling him with them.

“Oh stop it, Uncle Jay,” Mar'i sighed, although she clearly found the whole situation amusing judging by her vibrant smile. “That’s not nice.”

“’S why I said it,” he clarified proudly with a shrug. He pulled himself off the wall and approached his niece. Pressing a familial peck on her cheek, he said, “You, at least, deserve to be kissed under the mistletoe.” Shoving his hands in his pockets, he said conspiratorially, “Now how can I contract a kiss from your mom?”

She laughed at that. “You know my dad doesn’t like it when you–”

“Mar'i, come help your mother with the lights at the top,” Grayson called.

Pulling an apologetic grimace, she told them, “Oops, gotta go,” and waved as she flew over to the tree.

“You gotta step up your game, dude,” Todd sighed before making his way to stand next to Cassandra.

…

Evidence of Grayson’s artistic flair did not stop at the Manor. After a few weeks, every available inch of Titan’s Tower was covered in wall hangings, tinsel, and strings of multicolored fairy lights. Damian could hardly walk, even in the wide hallways of the Tower, without snagging his hood on a decoration. It was nothing short of unacceptable.

Even those whose belief systems did not include celebrating Christmas seemed to embrace the holiday decorations. The Logan girl took to scented candles, and holly, gingerbread, and cinnamon mixed to create a noxious infusion of a scent that could be described as pure Christmas.

Damian was almost always less enthused about any sort of celebration than most other people he knew, but surely there was a limit to what was normal and surely his teammates had exceeded it.

Grayson continued her streak of successfully irritating him by hanging mistletoe over every possible structure that even resembled a door. It was well known by the entire team that Damian would sooner go up against the entirety of the Church of Blood than allow himself to be kissed under such circumstances, so it wasn’t his own personal situation which bothered him.

Being in a building full of hormonal teenagers was annoying enough on its own. Throwing in any sort of sexual scenario, even the simple act of a kiss, made it so much worse.

Harper was left alone, largely, because of her relationship with Zatara. Iris, when within earshot of Jai, was also left unbothered by the majority of males on the team.

This meant that most flirtations were directed toward Grayson, even when Damian was nearby as she let it be known that his opinion did not matter to her in the least.

It became common practice, in the month that the Tower was so elaborately decorated, for a male team member to wait in the arch of a doorway and refuse to move unless Grayson bestowed a kiss upon his cheek.

She seemed to think this behavior was endearing, but Damian found it stupid and irritating.

After a few weeks, it became apparent that Grayson would kiss anyone and everyone who appeared next to her under mistletoe except for Damian. She’d not even asked if he wanted her to.

And he didn’t, of course, but the way she would smile at him and simply pass by lit an angry fire in his chest. She could have at least seemed interested in including him in the holiday ritual. It was as though she knew that purposefully excluding him while appeasing everyone else infuriated him and was doing it on purpose.

…

“All I am asking you to do is ask her why she refrains from kissing me so consistently,” Damian instructed as he paced in front of Colin’s closed bedroom door.

Colin sighed. He was laying on his bed, supine and with his shins hanging over the edge. “You do know that scowling at her whenever she gets within a ten foot distance is probably the reason she doesn’t wanna kiss you?”

“No,” Damian reasoned, “because Logan has a rather frightful disposition and that does not seem to stop her. She is doing this on purpose.”

“So you want me to ask her why she doesn’t kiss you. Doesn’t that seem a little grade school?” Colin demanded, propping himself up on he elbow.

“Well I can’t very well ask her,” Damian snapped impatiently.

“Why not?”

“She’d get the wrong idea.”

“The idea that you want her to kiss you?”

“Obviously,” Damian confirmed, his voice short and irritated.

Amused, now, Colin pushed himself into a sitting position and queried, “Is that really the wrong idea, though?”

“Of course it is.” Damian frowned at his friend. “Do not make me hit you, Wilkes.”

“Alright, I’ll ask her,” the redhead agreed, standing. “But only because I think there’s something glaringly obvious here that you’re missing.”

That statement irked Damian. He was certainly not missing anything. He’d been trained by one of the best detective minds that this world had ever seen. He had an IQ of over 160. He’d been taught by Cassandra to read and react to body language.

The only one missing anything here was Colin, for not seeing that Grayson was only doing this to annoy him. Damian just wanted to hear her admit it.

The entrance to the kitchen was an arch, which in no way stopped Grayson from decorating it with the bothersome shrub. Damian would simply stand on the other side of the wall, concealed from sight but able to hear very well, and listen to their conversation.

Colin entered the kitchen under the pretense of fetching hot chocolate.

“So… Mistletoe, huh?” Colin began, and Damian smacked his hand into his forehead.

“Mhmm!” Grayson answered happily. “My mom always liked it and I thought it would be fun.”

“That’s cool,” Colin replied. “I noticed that you never kiss Damian or anything.”

“Damian?” she echoed, confused. “No, of course not. He threatened me with - what was it this time? - a puncture wound.”

“Hm,” Colin said thoughtfully.

Even though that was the case, Grayson never refrained from doing anything just because Damian had threatened her with bodily harm before. It seemed far more likely that she was completely uninterested in interacting with him, which irked Damian far more than the prospect of being kissed had before.

“Why, do you think he wants me to?” Mar'i asked curiously.

“Well…” Colin floundered. A ridiculous response, as the correct answer was ‘absolutely not’. “Do you want to?”

“You’re being weird, Colin,” she answered with a laugh. “And next time Damian has a problem with something, tell him to ask me himself, kay?”

“Um… Yeah, sorry.”

Damian sighed. Colin was, at times, completely useless.

Colin exited the kitchen, and before he was even clear of the archway, he said, “I dunno, dude, you heard what she said.”

Damian grabbed Colin by the shirt and pulled him out of the kitchen completely. “You are an idiot,” he hissed.

…

Christmas was fast approaching, which meant that soon, Grayson would take down all the ridiculous decorations, including the damned mistletoe.

In fact, this was the last day the Titans were scheduled to meet before Christmas, which likely meant that the next time they gathered here, the decorations would be removed.

It was a relief, honestly. Since Grayson’s conversation with Colin, things had only gotten worse. If she was unaware of any annoyance on Damian’s part before, she was aware of it now. Her eyes would flick up to the ceiling above them and she would linger for a moment before stepping away completely.

It was almost as though she was challenging him to kiss her.

The thought of actually kissing her or of being kissed by her had seeped into almost every second that wasn’t spent dwelling on more important subjects. He could hardly stand being in the same room as her, much less work cohesively with her in the event of an emergency.

He would have kissed her, too, if nothing else than to get the image out of his mind, except that doing that would have meant forfeiting whatever sort of competition they were having. And Damian Wayne did not like to lose.

The last night before they were set to disband before Christmas, the Tower was quiet. It was only out of habit that Damian was unable to sleep, and it was only out of restlessness that he was on his way to the kitchen.

Mar'i was on her way out at the same time Damian meant to enter, and they nearly walked into each other.

“Sorry,” she chirped, her usual cheery self, while Damian simply glared at her. She lingered the way she always did, looking up at him with an amused smile. He hated that she was always so amused by something that took up every ounce of his attention. “Well, good night,” she said when he didn’t answer, and she moved to go back to her room.

Damian caught her by the arm. “Grayson,” he called before she could pass by him into the hallway, and she turned bright, inquisitive eyes toward him.

He looked at her for a moment, considering, before pulling her into him and crushing his lips against hers.

His grip was gentle but it was clear by the roughness he used and the surprised softness of her mouth that he was taking something from her. In his mind’s eye, Damian saw himself drawing back and apologizing, covering his mistake with the promise that it wouldn’t happen again, but he couldn’t make himself do it. His grip tightened on her arm and he found his other hand trailing up the small of her back until his fingers touched the silky heat of her hair.

Shocked into action by the unexpected warmth, he wrenched himself away from her and backed away until his head hit the opposite end of the archway. She was looking up at him, dazed, still with that inquisitive look in her eyes.

“S-sorry,” he mumbled, blushing furiously. “I don’t know why I did that.”

Her mouth folded into a soft frown. “You don’t?”

“I–no,” he stammered, apologetic.

With a roll of her eyes, she sighed, “You stupid, idiot boy.” Then she fisted the loose fabric of his cape and pulled him toward her, and she lifted her feet off the floor and floated for better leverage. Their lips met again, Mar'i’s soft but demanding against his own.

Damian raised one hand to her cheek, and with the other hand he gripped at the wall, digging his fingers into the molding which punctuated the archway entrance to the kitchen.

Clearly,Mar'i had taken control of the situation, so Damian allowed himself to enjoy the movement of her mouth against his, the little sounds she made when he increased the pressure of the kiss, and the odd sensation of heat radiating from her fingers as she gripped his shoulders to anchor herself.

When she leaned away she was smirking, and her lips were red and slightly swollen. “I’ve wanted to do that for a while,” she admitted, which made his insides squirm in a not-unpleasant way.

“Would you like to do it again?” he asked as casually as possible, surprised by the gruffness in his voice.

Fierce pink bloomed over her cheeks, and there was a slight whoosh as her hair ignited. “You mean now?”

He shrugged awkwardly and ran a gloved hand through his hair. “I mean whenever you’d like.”

She beamed at him and nodded, and floating backward, she pulled him by the cape in the general direction of her bedroom.


	6. Pacific Rim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Pacific Rim AU

Mary Grayson swiped her bangs and the loose hair that had escaped from its ponytail out of her eyes. Her lunch tray had hardly any food on it at all. An apple, a salad that consisted mainly of lettuce, stir fry the server practically forced her to take which she was currently poking worriedly at.

“Come on, Grayson,” Robbie Long said as he sat down across from her. “You’re in training. You need to actually eat or you’ll never be healthy enough to pilot a Jaeger.”

She violently stabbed at a crunchy piece of lettuce and shoved it in her mouth, glaring at Robbie the whole time. “I’m eating fine, as you know,” she around her greens.

“Why you even want to pilot one of those things is beyond me. I could teach you to operate the computers. There are plenty of opportunities here without you having to stick your neck out.”

“Shut up, Robbie.” She wasn’t in the mood. This was the umpteenth time this week he’d tried to talk her out of continuing her Jaeger pilot training. She had a feeling her father had something to do with it.

“Anyway, you should really eat more. You don’t have any carbs or proteins on your plate, and with your strict training schedule–”

“Would you give it a rest, Robbie? I’m not your little sister.” Pointedly, she shoved the tray across the table until it bumped into Robbie’s. Pulling her knee up to rest her chin on it, she added, “I’ll make up for it at dinner.”

Robbie picked up her apple and took a bite out if it. “Just ‘cause your dad’s on a run now doesn’t mean you can get away with not eating. It’s a level two, anyway. It’s nothing your dad won’t be able to handle.”

Mary did sort of have a habit of not eating very much when her dad was piloting, but that didn’t mean Robbie should lecture her about it. “I’m nineteen years old. I’ll eat when I want.”

“Okay, whatever. You tell your dad that I tried.”

“Blue Demon returning to dock,” a voice over the loudspeaker called, and there was a slight shuffle as the required personnel made their way to the hangar.

“Do you need to get that?” Mary asked Robbie, who had put her apple down and was starting on her stir-fry.

“Nope. You gonna eat now?”

She rolled her eyes and picked up the apple, turning the side he’d bitten away from her mouth.

“Emergency medic personnel to assist Blue Demon pilot Dick Grayson,” the voice boomed, and this time there was a larger scramble.

Mary almost choked on her apple and slammed it back down on her tray before literally jumping over the table.

“Wait! Mary!” Robbie called, glancing at the half-eaten stir-fry before running after her.

Mary pounded down the wide hallways to the Blue Demon’s hangar. She’d come this way dozens of times before, and even with medic personnel in scrubs and white sneakers pushing past her she knew the way by heart.

He was already being helped by the time she got there. There wasn’t much she could actually do to help, but that wasn’t going to stop her.

She pushed through the small crowd of extra medical personnel and rubberneckers to the metal stairs that had been pushed to the side of the Jaeger, allowing easy access to the Pilot chamber.

“You can’t go up there now,” a severe-looking woman with black hair and eyes like a storm cloud told her.

“That’s my dad!” Mary shouted, and the woman only gave her a suspicious look.

“Mary, Christ,” Robbie panted, finally having caught up to her and pushed his way through the crowd. “Look, Rach, here’s my clearance ID.” He took the plastic card hung from a lanyard around his neck and showed it to the woman.

“That’s nice, Robert, but you’re only cleared to inspect the equipment–”

“I’ll do that now. The sooner the better, right?”

The woman sighed. “It wasn’t me who let you up,” she sighed as she unhooked the chain which blocked the entrance to the stairs. Mary raced up them as Robbie assured the woman that he forced his way onto the Jaeger.

“Dad!” Mary shouted as she caught sight of him.

He was leaning heavily on two medical personnel, his arms around their shoulders as they led him toward the stretcher Mary had just pushed past, and his face was white as a sheet.

His leg was bent at an unnatural angle and blood coated the floor of his half of the Jaeger.

Her arm was caught in a painful grip and pulled roughly, and to alleviate the pain in her shoulder she turned to face her assailant.

Blue eyes like the center of a flame, startling against sand-colored skin and dark hair, glared at her. “Leave him for a moment,” her father’s drift partner hissed. “He doesn’t have the energy for you right now.”

She’d met Damian Wayne a handful of times before. He was an unpleasant sort of person, with the kind of good looks that made you trust him and a short temper that made you wish you didn’t. Her father assured her that once you got past his rough exterior, he was loyal and honest to a fault and moreover, he was excellent at what he did. Her father said the problem was that he didn’t trust anybody else, which made him spiteful, but Mary thought that was overcomplicating things a bit.

“He’d want to see me and you know it,” she growled, and she wrenched her arm out of his grasp.

“At least wait until he’s on the stretcher.”

She turned away from him because she couldn’t think of an argument against it. Crossing her ms sulkily, she watched the medics ease her father onto the stretcher.

“What happened, anyway?” she demanded, whirling to face Damian angrily, turning so quickly her hair flared out behind her.

“I dint think I like your accusatory tone,” Damian answered with narrowed eyes.

“You’re completely fine and he’s bleeding all over the place?” She raised her eyebrows at him.

“There was an unexpected second kaiju,” he told her. “Not that you have any right to know.”

“A second–?”

The kaiju had been surfacing from the ocean floor more and more often, but for two to come up at once hadn’t been heard of. The kaiju problem was growing. “Mary?”

“Dad!” Forgetting about Damian completely, Mary hurried over to the stretcher, trying not to stare at her father’s leg. “Daddy, how are you feeling?” The past few minutes had been such a panic, it was difficult for her to keep her voice calm now.

“I think the leg’s broken. It’ll be an easy fix.”

She wanted to point out that it was definitely a bit more complicated than simply broken. She knew he was saying that to protect her, so she played along to protect him. “You’re right. You’ll be back up here in no time.”

The truth was, it took a long time. After a month his leg was not even halfway healed, and it would take massive amounts of physical therapy just to get him to walk again. It was likely he’d have to use a cane.

In the month that the Blue Demon was out of commission, there were two more double kaiju attacks. Damian was getting restless. He’d been putting off the process of finding a drift compatible partner to fill in for her dad, but it was becoming pretty clear that they needed all the resources they could get.

There were already some new Jaegers being built. Mary had been getting ready eagerly, along with some of the others who had been training.

Wanting to be a Jaeger pilot was tricky. The most skilled person in the world wouldn’t be able to pilot a Jaeger if they couldn’t find a partner.

Mary hadn’t mentioned the nearing completion date of the new Jaegers to her father. Someone else probably had, but she didn’t want to discuss it with him.

It was part of her normal routine to visit her father between practicing martial arts and studying up on the drift process.

Her sneakers made soft squeaking noises against the clean tile floor of the med bay as she made her way over to her father’s bed. She was surprised to find the curtain closed, closing a semicircle around the bed that shielded it from view. This happened a lot when he was between surgeries, but not since he’d first been admitted. Quietly, so as not to disturb him if he was speaking to a doctor, Mary tiptoed to the edge of the curtain and held her breath in order to listen closely.

“–a new drift partner. Your replacement.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Damian. I obviously won’t be able to get into a Jaeger any time soon, if ever.”

“Of course you’ll recover. Finding a fill-in is only a temporary fix.”

“You know as well as I do that drifting isn’t that simple.”

There was a small silence between them, and Mary took the opportunity to knock on the wall. “Daddy?” she called innocently, as though she hadn’t been listening to their conversation.

There was some murmuring before her father answered, “Come in, Starshine.”

Opening the curtain as little as possible, she ducked into his makeshift room, mumbling, “Don’t call me that in front of people, dad.”

Damian didn’t seem to notice. “Grayson,” he greeted her with a tiny nod. “I was just leaving.”

“No, wait!” This was the only opportunity Mary had to talk to her dad about this. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. What were you guys talking about?”

“Nothing,” Damian said shortly.

That made her sulk, which seemed to make her father take pity in her.

“We were just talking about the Demon. Damian’s going to need a partner to fill in for me.”

“Really? Sounds rough.”

“Yes, well, it should take a few days at most. There are already quite a few people who wish to pilot the new Jaegers,” Damian explained as though she didn’t already know that. “With any luck, a match from the most prepared of them shouldn’t be too difficult to find.”

“Haha,” Mary said casually. “Maybe I have a shot.”

Damian’s posture tended immediately, but Mary wasn’t sure if it was a direct result of her words or because her father, who had been drinking a small cup of water, started choking.

“Daddy?” Mary’s voice was anxious. She wasn’t sure whether she should pat him on the back or let him be. “Are you okay? Should I call a nurse?”

Still coughing, Dick shook his head. “Mary, I don’t want you piloting a Jaeger.”

It wasn’t as though they had never spoken about this before. Neither of them like talking about it, but they had sat down together and had an exhausting conversation about it, before Mary seriously started training for Jaeger piloting.

“I know that, dad, but you agreed that if I’m good enough to be considered for the new Jaegers and if I can get a drift partner–”

“Not Damian,” Dick said decisively. “I don’t want you partnering with Damian.”

She whirled around to look at Damian, but somewhere between her last outburst and then, he left. “But–why not?”

“Listen to me,” Dick said, his jaw set determinedly and his eyes lot up in a fierce, protective way she hadn’t seen since before the accident. “Damian’s really good. Better than me. Better than anyone. The higher-ups know that. Regardless of who he gets partnered with, they’re going to send him on dangerous missions.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Mary soothed. He was getting awfully worked up about this. “He can’t really be that good.”

“There’s a lot about Damian that you don’t know.”

“Like what?” she asked, curious.

“There’s a lot about him that you don’t need to know, he amended. "Look, Mary, it’s not too late for you to go to school. Somewhere safe, of course. The middle of the country, the east coast, abroad maybe–”

“I’m not doing that, daddy. You know why.”

“Okay. Starshine, I want you to take a look at what happened to me. I want you to think about what it means. I probably won’t get in a Jaeger again. I probably won’t even walk without a cane again.”

“That doesn’t mean that’s gonna happen to me,” she sulked.

“I know. That’s why I’m not fighting you about trying for the new Jaegers. Just keep away from the Blue Demon, okay?”

Mary sighed. “Yes, daddy.”

“Good girl.” Dick held out his hand for her tale to take, which she did obediently, and he squeezed her fingers and kissed her on the cheek.

Of course, she promised herself that she’d find out what was going on with Damian. …

“Robbie!” Mary called, and there was think from within the Jaeger, presumably as he hit his head while trying to stand up too quickly.

“What do you want, Grayson?” he called back, rubbing his head with the hand that was not holding a wrench.

It had been three weeks since her talk with her father. He was still in the med unit, but he moved from the long-term care facility to the rehab facility. She’d been trying to talk to Damian, between Jaeger pilot training and runs to the hospital to see her dad, but she was pretty sure he was pointedly ignoring her.

She had a lot of questions for him. Many were admittedly the result of her nosy curiosity, but she also wanted his opinion on the likelihood of the two of them being drift compatible. She had a theory that since he was drift compatible with her dad, he’d be compatible with her, too. Robbie had been helpful, letting her quiz him on the possibility of drift compatibility being genetic, but he often reminded her that he was a technician, not a scientist.

Lots of parents weren’t drift compatible with their children, and many siblings weren’t compatible with each other, either. But it seemed to Mary, through what studies she had done on her own, that it was more likely. So maybe there was hope.

Of course, she’d much rather pilot a new Jaeger. That way she’d get a partner who wasn’t so temperamental. But if Damian’s drift compatibility with her father was her ticket in to Jaeger piloting, she wasn’t about to pass that up. If they were drift compatible they’d have to get along, eventually.

“I only came by so you could wish me luck,” Mary pouted.

“Like you need any luck,” Robbie answered with a roll of his eyes.

“Well a confidence boost works, too.”

“Are you nervous?”

“A little. If I get it, I get it. There are still new Jaegers, though, so if I don’t get this there are more openings.”

“Yeah, but I’d be careful. You’re going up mostly against people who’ve piloted Jaegers before. With the new ones, it’ll be more newbies like you.”

“So, what, you don’t think I can do it?” Nervousness was creeping into her voice. She kept reminding herself that this wasn’t a huge deal, but that didn’t seem to make her any less nervous.

“I didn’t say that,” Robbie rushed to assure her. “I’m just letting you know who your competition is. Besides, I don’t know if failing to be drift compatible with Damian Wayne is the worst thing in the world.”

“My dad’s drift compatible with Damian Wayne,” she reminded him.

“Oh, right,” he muttered, scratching at his head with the wrench.

“I’ll come find you when everything’s finished. We’ll grab lunch, if I’m done by then.”

“Got it.” Apparently, the test for drift compatibility was just a spar. It seemed odd to Mary, but the small crowd of people was assured that Damian would know when he fought them. Only the other “newbies”, as Robbie so kindly put it, seemed unsure about this.

Mary wondered at that. What was drift compatibility even like? How many people had she passed in hallways or on the street that had the potential for a bond so deep that she couldn’t even imagine it?

And, something she hadn’t thought of until now… Did she really want a bond that deep with somebody like Damian?

Panic began to rise in her chest. Maybe she could slip out without anybody noticing, tell Robbie she lost the spar and leave it at that–

“Grayson? Mary Grayson?” the tiny girl equipped with a clipboard who seemed to be overseeing this whole mess called.

Shoot.

Damian hadn’t really been paying attention, or at least it seemed that way, but at that he snapped his head in her direction.

Mechanically, she stepped forward. Her body was on autopilot and her mind was racing. She was hyper-aware of all the people in the room–Robbie was right, almost every single one of them was older than her. It was stupid of her to think that she could do this.

Looking back, none of her dreams of piloting a Jaeger factored in a co-pilot. She’d learned about co-pilots, studied about the bond they shared, she even knew pairs of co-pilots, but somehow she never realized that piloting a Jaeger would mean co-piloting a Jaeger.

Damian was looking at her angrily, cold fury in his eyes. He must have been thinking about her father and how she was disobeying him.

A bo-staff–the combat weapon of choice for Jaeger pilots–was thrown at her, and she caught it numbly. She took up a defensive stance, the staff held diagonally in front of her body. Damian chose an offensive stance, the staff held horizontally and pointed at her.

She didn’t even hear the command, but he was running at her and she was reacting. He was fast–really fast–and she suspected he was strong, too.

Their bo-staves clacked together with a hollow sound and Mary was pushed back over the matted floor. A bored look replaced the angry fire she’d seen on him earlier. It was almost insulting. Damian performed a quick turn. Mary guessed that it was to gain moment for a swing at her torso, so she rolled to the ground in a duck. She took a swing at his ankles, but he jumped lightly before she had the opportunity to knock him over.

Mary scrambled to her feet and jabbed at him with the bo-staff. Their weapons clacked together hollowly before Damian pushed against her while sliding his hands down the length of her bo-staff, pushing his closer to her hands. She lost her grip on the staff and flew out of her hands, rolling away from her on the ground.

She was able to block a few swings from him, but in the end it was no use. He pushed her to the ground and leveled the end of his staff at her throat.

That bored look was on his face the whole time. It made Mary grind her teeth together angrily.

These fights took three rounds, so Mary stood slowly, trying to take the opportunity to think of a different way to do this.

She held her bo-staff parallel to the ground, perfectly straight, and the next time Damian took a swing ay her, she spread her hands to the edges of the bo-staff. It snapped in half, the edges where it broke jagged and uneven.

They were poorly weighted, but she had herself a pair of eskrima sticks now.

Damian hesitated, and Mary took the opportunity to attack him furiously. Her father had trained her in the use of eskrima sticks since they started living in this base. Being her father’s drift partner, Damian probably knew that already. He recovered quickly, but not before Mary had backed him fairly close to the wall.

She found it easier to parry the blows from the bo-staff with the eskrima sticks. She was doing much better this round, and she was beginning to think that she might win.

Of course, Damian crushed that thought almost as soon as it appeared by using the wall she’d backed him against as leverage. His back pressed flat against it, he delivered a sharp kick to her stomach with both legs that knocked the wind out of her and made her sink to her knees. While gasping in a breath, she tried to fend off the final swung of the bo-staff, but he knocked the stick out of her hand and set his weapon against her throat.

She lost. She pulled out all the stops and she lost. Tears stung at her eyes.

Unexpectedly, however, Damian crouched I. Front of her and tilted her head back roughly. “What did you do?” he hissed, and the only way she could think to respond was to shake his hand away.

“Don’t leave,” he ordered sourly, and the girl with the clipboard gestured for her to wait near the far wall.

She watched Damian fight several more times. Almost all of his opponents were more skilled than she was, and he beat them with what seemed like very little effort. At first, she imagined that he pulled her to the side because they were drift compatible, even when she’d lost against him. But as she watched him spar, she grew less and less hopeful. There was no way she could match up to someone like that. Her dad was right–Damian was really good. He was so good that it was weird. What made him that way?

“Dammit,” he growled upon defeating his last opponent, and he muttered some more things in a language that was completely foreign to Mary. He turned his gaze on her and she shrank back into the wall a little. “You’re not supposed to be here,” he told her.

“I–” she protested weakly, but he interrupted her.

“I hope you’re happy, Grayson,” he snapped, “because we’re drift compatible. I won’t be the one to explain this to your father.”

“My–? But… How can you tell?” Confusion filled her voice.

“You can’t even tell,” he scoffed, and for the first time she could recall, he was smiling. It wasn’t a nice smile, though. It was almost predatory. “You be ready for a drift trial at the hangar tomorrow morning, Grayson. Eight hundred hours. Don’t be late.”

“But–”

He held a hand up to silence and stormed out of the room.

“Congratulations, Mary,” she muttered sarcastically.

Nobody seemed happy for her. Robbie was skeptical during lunch. Her father went from scolding her to lecturing her to being sulky quiet so that she knew that he was blaming himself for this.

None of that mattered. Even though she was second-guessing a lot of things, this was what she wanted.

…

The next morning was a flurry of activity for Mary, since she promised she’d stop by really early to see her dad after he had some time to think about the whole situation. He was way better about it, but he was obviously not pleased. She ran to the mess hall to shove some food in her face and she was still chewing on a piece of toast when she arrived at the hangar.

She was on time, but everyone else seemed to have been here for a while already.

She was helped up to the pilot deck by a technician–not Robbie, he was busy working on the newer Jaegers. She’d been up here a few times before, but somehow it looked so different than it ever had. The neural hook-up looked more daunting and there seemed to be way more controls than she’d ever seen.

When she went to see him earlier, her father explained a few things to her. He told her about “chasing the rabbit” and how to avoid doing, about how drifting might feel. There was still a possibility that they weren’t drift compatible at all, but Damian seemed pretty sure about it.

Damian wasn’t talking to her at all, even while Mary was getting hooked up. She was supposed to be able to get in the hook-up by herself, but to make sure nothing was messed up for the first drift, a pair of technicians helped her.

The countdown started and her nerves spiked. She wished she was doing this with her dad instead of with Damian, or at least that he could’ve been nicer about it. She breathed in time with the countdown, a breath in and a breath out. She didn’t want to seem scared.

And then, all at once, images played in front of her. Familiar images. She saw herself and her father when the first came to the base. She saw her mother, sick. She saw her family the way it was once: Whole. Her mother and her father holding hands, the tv playing a cartoon she loved.

It was hard to experience, really. It felt so real, but at the same time, she knew that she was in a Jaeger. Like a dream she couldn’t wake up from.

The images shifted. Mary and her parents were gone, and in their place was a young boy. Damian, clearly, by the skin tone and eye color. He was in an exotic place, a desert oasis, maybe. Weapons flashed in front of his face. When he picked one up,bshe could feel cool metal in her own hand.

The images jolted and he was a little older, and there was a tall man grabbing him by the arm and forcing him into a ditch in the sand. Mary was watching, able to see the look on Damian’s face. But she could also feel what Damian was feeling–the tight grip on his arm, the scorching sand at his feet. She could also feel his panic as sand filled the cavern, and tears running down his face. Sand stuck to his face as it rained down on him, filling the cavern so slowly but way too fast. He couldn’t breathe–she couldn’t breathe–

It wasn’t real. It was a memory. Something that happened once and something that had to be moved past. She fought against the memory, against the constricting tightness in her chest–

The images changed again. Damian’s mother handing him over to his father. She knew who the people were without knowing how she knew it. She was doing it to protect him from his grandfather, that much would have been apparent even she hadn’t seen the previous memory. Damian was scared and sad, but he was also amazed to meet his father ffor the first time.

He was much older now, and he was meeting her father for the first time. He was angry. He didn’t trust him. Another jump, probably after a few years, and the anger was still there but the mistrust was completely gone.

And then she saw her father on the stretcher and she saw herself, and Damian was angry and scared and she was shouting at him. Seeing it from his perspective, she felt bad, but how was she supposed to know that he actually had feelings like she did?

“The drift was a success,” she heard from beyond the visions, and she heard technology whirring. The images of Damian’s memory rewound in fast-motion, and her own memories flashed before her eyes again, and then there was nothing.

She gasped as she realized where she was. Her throat was constructed and tear tracks wet her face. She clawed at her throat as she imagined swallowing sand.

Damian was staring at her, and he was panting, too. He yanked off the hook-ups and she could tell that he was sweating at his hairline. Even when the pair of technicians helped her out of the neural hook-ups, he wouldn’t stop staring at her.

As soon as she was out, he grabbed her forcefully by the wrist and dragged her out of the pilot chamber, and he kept dragging her until they reached an empty room and he shoved her inside, swinging the door shut behind him.

“What the hell is your problem?” Mary hissed, rubbing her wrist where he’d grabbed her.

“What are you?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, but heat rose to her face.

He took a menacing step toward her, which prompted her to scramble two steps back.

“What are you?” Damian demanded again. “An alien? A kaiju?”

“I’m not a kaiju,” she growled.

Damian lunged at her, and she responded by holding her fist out toward him. A fierce pink glow bathed her fingers, throwing weird shadows over the dimly lit room.

“That is not normal,” he muttered, staring at her hand.

“You can’t tell anybody,” she whispered.

He snatched her wrist, his fingers well below the pink flow, and he stared at it.

“Let go–” she grumbled, her heart pounding, but his grip was too tight.

Carefully, he lowered his fingers so they were almost touching her hand. “How can you stand the heat?”

“I don’t know,” she mumbled, desperately trying to wriggle out of his grasp. “It just doesn’t bother me.”

He released her wrist. “Your father doesn’t know about any of this.”

“I know that. He didn’t know about my mom either.”

“He thinks she died because she was sick.”

“You already know what happened. I’m not going to explain it to you.”

“Your mother fought that kaiju with her bare hands and was killed because of her poor health.” He was watching her carefully, but he didn’t seem scared by her powers. “And you watched her die.”

“Stop it,” Mary growled, and she allowed the light from her palm to fill her eyes. She wasn’t used to shaping the strange energy inside her, however, and when she blinked the light was replaced with shining tears. “Please.”

“Tt,” he sighed with a roll of his eyes. “At least I know why you want to pilot a Jaeger so badly. You plan to avenge your mother.” His tone was mocking.

Mary ignored as best she could, but it made her want to summon the glow to her eyes again. “What about you?” she snapped. “At least I have a reason.”

“Oh, I have a reason,” Damian told her, and he took a menacing step toward her. As he was already very close, Mary tried to take another step back, but her back hit the wall. “I’m very good at killing things,” he said conspiratorially, as though he were telling her a precious secret.

“Th-that’s it?” she spluttered, ignoring the heat that spread over her face at his proximity.

“Not everyone is after vengeance,” Damian said, leaning back. His tone had become suddenly bored. “Some people just want to find their place in this world, even as it’s falling apart.”

“Wait,” she called as he turned to leave. She grabbed his sleeve to halt him, and even as he fixed her with a stern glare, she held on tightly. “The whole time I’ve known you, I thought you were… I don’t know… a robot or something. That you didn’t feel things the same way I did. But now–”

“Don’t you realize?” he demanded impatiently. “No one feels things the same way you do. It’s not just the starbolt ability. You’re different, Grayson. I was almost thrown out of the drift because I couldn’t handle the intensity of your emotions.”

“B-but–” she stammered. She never considered that there was another aspect to her powers that made her inhuman.

“Then again, I’ve only ever drifted with your father. Maybe that kind of thing varies by the individual. It certainly felt unnatural to me.”

“S-so… So I’m not–”

“Oh, you’re a freak, there’s no doubt about that.” He wrenched his arm out of her grip and headed for the door.

She wanted to talk to him about his weird past–about nearly being buried alive as some kind of initiation process by his grandfather, about leaving his mother to live with his father. But she supposed there wasn’t really anything to say. They both knew what the other was thinking, now. There wasn’t anything left to say.

Over the next month and a half, Mary and Damian grew close. They were locked together by their secret pasts. Mary had taken to dragging Damian to lunch with her and Robbie, not that either of the boys appreciated that. He was also surprisingly helpful during combat with Kaijus, although he had to remind her often times to keep her emotions in check because it was too much for him.

They were finally settling into a routine when something miraculous happened.

After two months of rehab and exhausting physical therapy, her father was cleared for Jaeger piloting.

Both Damian and Mary were there when Dick received the news, ams he chatted to them both about getting back in the Blue Demon for the next hour.

Mary tried to be happy for him, even though that meant that she would would have to try to find a new drift partner and fight for a spot on one of the new Jaegers which were finally nearing completion. Dick told her that she was probably at the top of the list for the new Jaegers, though, since they were always scrambling for experienced pilots.

On the walk back to their rooms, Damian was very quiet. He wouldn’t engage in any kind of conversation, and when Mary went to duck into her room, he pulled her away from her door and pulled her behind him.

“Damian,” she complained, but he shushed her and that was the end of that.

He swung the door open to his room and she stepped in, growing slightly nervous as he swung the heavy door shut.

“You can’t drift with anyone else,” he said shortly.

“I–what?”

“Think, Mar'i,” he growled. “There has to be a brain under all that hair.”

She blushed, both at the insult and the affectionate use of the name Mar'i. It was her real name, the one her mother gave her. Her father didn’t know it, and in fact no one alive knew it except for her, and thanks to drifting, Damian. He’d started calling her that a few weeks ago, and he never seemed to notice that he did it.

“But… You mean because of my powers? What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

His gaze sharpened and she winced at it. “You could be turned over to the scientists and examined. Vivisection, ruthless experiments, forced drifting–”

“So, what, you think I should give up piloting?” she demanded.

“I don’t know what the solution is, here.”

“You’re making a huge deal out of this,” Mary told him, crossing her arms stubbornly. “You didn’t turn me in. Maybe my next drift partner won’t, either.”

“I considered it,” he admitted, his voice steady and his gaze sharp.

It didn’t come as a surprise to her. Nothing he said could surprise her, they’d drifted so many times. She sort of knew that, in a subconscious way.

“Well, why didn’t you?”

He lowered his eyebrows at her, confused. He expected that she already knew. “Part of it was out of respect for your father.”

“Part of it?” she echoed. “What else was it?”

“It–nothing.”

“No,” she said in a singsong voice. “Why else?”

He glared at her, then leaned back against his bed. “It was the optimal choice. I cannot kill kaijus without a drift partner.”

“Lying again,” she said. “I can tell when you’re lying, you know. I’ve been in your brain.” Because she knew it would annoy him, she crossed over to his side of the room and ruffled his hair before he caught her wrist.

“Stop that, Grayson,” he mumbled, annoyed.

“Then tell me!”

Fierce red bloomed across his cheeks, which was not what she expected. She furrowed her eyebrows at him, confused. “Damian?”

“Tt,” he growled, and he pulled her by the wrist that he still held in a tight grip so that she was even closer. “You must have noticed,” he murmured.

She had… but mostly she noticed a lack of anger, calmness where there usually was none. She didn’t realize what that meant. “I…” she began, but she found herself unable to continue. He knew that she didn’t notice, not really.

He released her wrist, giving her an opportunity to step back.

Instead of doing that, however, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down gently until their mouths touched.

He seemed unsure of where to put his hands, touching her arms and her back and her waist.

“Mar'i,” he muttered, stroking his fingers over her cheek. “I can’t imagine that your father would be happy with this.”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s a mood-killer. Is that, like, a huge problem for you?”

“No,” he said after a moment. “I just don’t want you to anger your father on my behalf.”

She laughed at that, which Damian didn’t seem to appreciate. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I do a lot of things my dad doesn’t exactly approve of. Now stop talking and kiss me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I try not to discredit my own writing but I have to note that it was probably pretty apparent but I am not, by any means, a Pacific Rim expert or even a fan, really. I saw the movie once. In theatres. Because my friend wanted to. Anyway, this is probably not very loyal to Pac Rim canon or fanon or literally anything, so it's probably better to view it as: I took the idea of drifting and mechas and made a demonfire AU based off of that.


	7. Hickey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Hickey
> 
> A hickey technically isn’t a kiss; it’s a red mark (a bruise, really) left on the skin after someone sucks hard enough on it. Hickeys hurt a little to get, but some people think the sucking feels good, especially on the side of the neck. It can be embarrassing to walk around with a hickey, so before you start sucking, get permission first.

Mar’i whimpered into Damian’s shirt as his mouth closed around the soft skin of her neck.

“Damian,” she breathed in protest, her voice shaky.

He took this as an encouragement and he sucked at the sensitive skin, earning an involuntarily gasp from her before she managed to push him away slightly.

“Hey,” she complained, touching the small bruise already forming beneath the skin. “What’d you do that for?”

He sulked immediately. “You seemed to rather enjoy—”

“Yeah but if that leaves a mark…” She disentangled herself from him and floated over to her mirror, tilting her neck to view it better. “Damn,” she muttered. The skin was already turned a deep maroon color, ringed by a slight indentation from teeth.

“Tt,” Damian muttered from her bed, now sitting cross legged and leaning his chin on his hand. “Why don’t you just cover it with makeup?”

“That never works,” she dismissed, playing with her hair in an attempt to cover the offending mark without looking suspicious.

“‘Never’?” he repeated. “Just how often have you run into this problem?”

She let go of her hair, letting it spill down messily over her shoulder so she could glare at him. “I’ve had a few hickeys in my life, Damian. That a problem?”

“No,” he answered quickly. Then, as she turned to look at her reflection, he asked, “How many is a few?”

“Look,” she began, annoyed, but she was cut off by a knock on her door.

“Mare?”

She swore in Tamaranean under her breath as the sound of the hand scanner rejecting Lian’s handprint went off.

“Is your door locked?”

“Uh, yeah,” Mar’i shouted as she grabbed Damian by the elbow and pulled him off her bed. He wasn’t happy with being manhandled, but she didn’t know what else to do. “I’m changing.”

“Changing? Into what?”

Thinking quickly, Mar’i wrenched open the closet door, decently sized but much smaller than the one in her bedroom back at the Manor, and she shoved Damian inside. She grabbed a shirt off a hanger and a scarf off one of the hooks, ignoring his whispered protests and shutting the door on him. His cape was laying on the floor and she kicked that under her bed.

She yanked off the top portion of her Nightstar uniform and pulled on the shirt she’d gotten. Desperately wrapping the scarf around her throat to cover the telling mark she’d just received, she unlocked the door and slid it open.

“What’s up?” she asked, as though answering the door dressed in half her uniform was completely normal.

“Why’d you lock me out?” Lian asked, putting her hands on her hips.

“I didn’t lock it to keep you out. I just don’t want Jai running in on me ‘by accident’ again.”

“Yeah, I guess not. What’re you changing for, anyway? We’re supposed to be on duty. Damian’s gonna flip if he finds you ‘slacking off’.” Lian rolled her eyes exaggeratedly as she mentioned the leader of the Titans.

“Haha, yeah,” Mar’i said, willing herself not to glance at her closet. “I was just trying to pick out an outfit so you, me, and Iris can go out later.”

“Well, it depends. Are we going dancing or are we just going to grab something to eat at a bar? I mean, either way you’re going to want to wear something slutty, but there’s different kinds of slutty, you know?” Lian studied Mar’i’s shirt, tilting her head and squinting. “That shirt isn’t bad, but I’d lose the scarf. It’s not like you need it in Jump, anyway. Besides, what about that cami with the ruffles that makes your cleavage look really great and the purple skirt?” Lian took a step toward Mar’i’s closet, but Mar’i grabbed her wrist and pulled her back to the closet.

“But don’t you think this shirt would be great with those really tight jeans and a pair of boots with a heel?” she asked desperately.

“I mean, maybe. It depends if you wanna play up your ass or your tits. You’re lucky enough to have the option. Let’s see without the scarf,” Lian said thoughtfully, and she reached for the fringed end of the fabric.

“Wait a second, Lian—”

“Don’t be so defensive. What, are you hiding a hickey under there or something?”

“Of course not!” Mar’i shouted, but the blush that warmed her face gave her away.

“Oh my God, you are!”

“Lian, stop it!” Mar’i batted the redhead’s wrist away, but Lian’s curiosity was sparked and there was no discouraging her. In one skillful yank, Lian managed to unwind the scarf from Mar’i’s neck without choking her. “What! That totally is a hickey! Where the hell did you get that?”

“Dammit,” Mar’i growled, snatching her scarf. “Its not a hickey. I burned myself on my straightened.”

“Come on, Mare. Do you think I’m an idiot? You don’t get burns.” Lian tapped her on the head harder than was nice, bug Mar’i let it slide with no more than a glare because she was currently lying her ass off.

“I do so get burns. If I’m not ready for the heat, I get burned the same way you do.”

“Why are you being so defensive? Did you just meet the guy? I won’t judge. Wait a minute. It’s not one of the guys, is it? It’s not Zatara, right?”

Worry had begun to creep into Lian’s voice. She’d been harboring a small crush on the teenage magician, which he totally reciprocated but was to shy to confess to. Mar’i wasn’t touching that mess.

“X’hal, it’s not Zatara.”

“But it is one of the guys right? Is it Jai? I get why you’d keep that secret, because if Iris and all, but that’s not really cool.”

“I never said it was one of the guys,” Mar’i snapped. “Can you please just—”

“What about Wyld? He’s definitely into you, y’know.”

“He is not! It’s not Wyld. It’s not a hickey.”

“Oh my god!” Lian shouted triumphantly, and she clapped her hands over her mouth. “It isn’t. No way. It’s not Damian, is it? That’s sick, Mare. He’s, like, your cousin.”

“Damian isn’t my cousin!” She was blushing again, which was a definite giveaway. “I already told you, it’s not—”

“Your uncle, then. Right? Whoever it is, I bet they’re hiding in your closet. You’ve been looking at it out of the corner of your eye this whole time, and you won’t let me near it.”

“That’s stupid,” Mar’i hissed.

Lian escaped from Mar’i’s path and managed to get to her closet, which she yanked open.

Mar’i peered in fretfully over Lian’s shoulder, but to her immense confusion and relief, it was empty. “Aw, man. I really thought I’d find one of the guys in there. I guess you really are a nut.”

“Of course there’s no one in there,” Mar’i muttered in response to Lian but also to herself. Of course he wasn’t there anymore. He probably slipped out when she was busy answering the door.

“You’re safe for now, Grayson. But if you think I actually believe that that’s not a hickey, you have another thing coming,” Lian warned. “Anyway, I’ll go see what if Iris wants to go out or just grab some dinner. That should make it easier to decide what to wear. If you’re looking for attracting guys, that is.”

“Lian…”

“Okay, Miss Love-bite. Don’t get into any trouble while I’m gone.”

Mar’i rolled her eyes and shut her door after Lian, locking it once more and leaning on it. She was planning on telling her friends soon. But this was definitely not how she wanted them to find out.

When she looked up, Damian was hanging out her window by a jump line, looking so unamused as he waited for her to open the window for him.

“How the hell did you get out there without me noticing?” she demanded as he shuffled through the open window.

He shrugged. “Apparently, you are not very astute.”

“How sweet,” she said sarcastically.

He grabbed her wrist roughly and pulled her close, then he tilted her chin so that she was looking up at him. “I hope it goes without saying that you are not wearing any of the attire brought up in that conversation.”

She smirked at him and floated until she was at eye-level. “Or maybe you could show up,” she suggested. “If we leave together without letting Li or Irey know that you’re you, you can give me as many love bites as you want.”

“Tt,” he said, ducking away from her. “It’s not worth the trouble.” Although the words were serious, a soft smile placed itself over his mouth.

Mar’i was suddenly very excited to go out that night.


	8. Sweet Nothing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Talking kiss
> 
> Whisper sweet nothings into your partner’s mouth. If caught in the act, simply say, “I wasn’t kissing her. I was whispering into her mouth.”

Being the leader of the Titans was easy for Damian. Leading came naturally to him, as he knew it would. He always took care in delivering speeches and in organizing plans of attack.

Lately, however, he’d been running into an obstacle that he never prepared for.

Currently, they were debriefing after a mission. Nothing to be overly concerned about, but they had to discuss how things may have gone better and what went well. It took focus.

Lian was angry with Wyld because instead of following through with the usual plan of attack, he focused more on his sister than was be necessary which meant that Lian was on her own. Or something. Damian really didn’t care enough to keep it straight.

He should have interrupted their argument, but that would require focus and right now he wasn’t able to do that.

There were a few things that made the newly developed nature of his relationship with Mar’i Grayson difficult, but Damian didn’t even imagine that his position as leader would be one of those things.

It wasn’t that he worried about he to the point of neglecting his other teammates, and in fact he’d only grown more confident in her abilities in the time they’d spent together. It wasn’t even that she hesitated at his commands. She seemed to be less likely to question his authority of late.

The problem was at times like now, when she was so damn distracting. His eyes kept sliding from Wyld to Nightstar, not that she noticed as she was actually paying attention. He was annoyed at himself and at her, too, for apparently not having the same problem.

“—Robin?”

“What?” he snapped, irritated, his gaze sliding immediately on Lian.

“He totally disregarded the whole plan!”

“Yes, well, to be fair, the plan was altered at the last minute to include his sister, which is unsettling, whereas your place has been defined and you are expected to think on your feet by now.”

Lian glared at him. “So you think this is my fault?” she challenged.

“No. Wyld was in the wrong, clearly, but you did not show any skill at thinking on the fly.”

“That’s stupid!” she protested.

“Yes, and in fact, this whole conversation is stupid.” He rose quickly, his chair sliding out behind him and nearly tipping over. “I’m retiring to my room. Everyone is excused, barring Red Arrow and Wyld until they cease their childish bickering.”

It wasn’t the way he liked to make an exit, but he was tired of dealing with useless arguing. He wasn’t halfway down the hall when he felt a warm hand on his shoulder.

“What was that little tantrum?” Mar’i asked, her voice teasing.

Damian shrugged gruffly, grabbing her wrist as he rounded a corner. “I don’t have the patience to handle bickering.”

“You mean other people’s bickering,” she corrected.

He glared at her as he yanked his glove off with his teeth so he could press his palm against the scanner mounted next to his bedroom door.

“Don’t be so grumpy,” she said as his door opened, not making any move to enter with him.

He tugged her wrist until she was across the threshold, and as the door closed he muttered, “I’ll tell you why I’m so grumpy.” He slid his hands to her hips and she was surprised that she backed up slightly, her back pressed against the metal door.

He pressed his mouth against hers, firmly but gently, and without breaking the kiss he said, “It’s because you’re so damn distracting.”

She pressed her hands against his chest to put some space between them. “Wait, I what?”

“You’re distracting me,” he repeated, and he kissed her again, raising a hand to her chin to keep her close. “It’s very annoying.” His teeth touched her lip as he spoke, and he shifted from speaking to kissing seamlessly.

When he broke for air, Mar’i smiled at him mischievously. “You know there’s not much I can really do about that.”

He frowned at her. “I’m hoping to get it out of my system now.”

Damian smirked as a light blush bloomed over her cheeks, but the smirk faded as the door began to slide open and he was forced to step away from her.

Lian was on the other side of the door, looking angry. “I’ll show you not thinking on my—” she began, but her gaze flicked between Mar’i and Damian and she frowned at them. “Wait, were the two of you kissing?”

They looked between each other before Damian sighed. “No,” he grumbled, annoyed at having been interrupted. “I was just telling her something.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah I found the prompt kind of cringey, so I literally did the opposite of sweet-nothings by having him call her annoying because Damian is not really a sweet-nothing kinda guy.


	9. Lunacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After being granted a second chance at life thanks to his grandfather’s infamous Lazarus Pit, Damian just wants to return to his normal life. It’s harder than he thought.

He can’t help but think that he doesn’t deserve her.

She’s curled against him so peacefully, warm against the chill that won’t quite leave the mid-January air, and he’s running his fingers through her hair because he can’t sleep.

He thinks about it sometimes. About how familiar a sword feels when it slices through flesh, about how tightly he has to flex his arm to crush a throat beneath it, about how many times in his life his hands have been coated in blood.

His fingers flinch away from her automatically, and suddenly she’s too warm curled against him like this, her chin on his chest too sharp and too heavy.

The moon shines persistently over them, a rectangle of light through the wide windows falling over the width of the bed. Moonlight pales Damian’s skin, whitewashing his features and sharpening the shadows beneath his eyes, but it sparkles off Mar'i’s golden skin, shines off the dark tendrils of her hair, paints shadows over her cheeks that move with the flutter of her eyelashes.

Gritting his teeth against the sour taste that coats the back of his tongue, he balls the sheets in his fists. He isn’t even meant to be alive. The Lazarus Pit did that, forced him back from the dead, drove him mad–

Mar'i shifts against him, her hair brushing against his face. He wants to touch her, to wind his arms around her waist until she’s pressed into him, to stroke his fingers along her skin–

–leaving a trail of blood and acid from the Lazarus Pit–

“Damian?”

He woke her up with his thrashing. “Sorry,” he gasps, and his voice tastes like metal. “Mar'i, I–”

Her green eyes are filled with worry. Even though he finds her eyes less expressive without the hologram projector, he can still tell that she’s worried. It only makes him feel worse, and his skin roils with uncomfortable heat.

“You’re sweating,” she observes, and she props herself up to look at him.

“I’m–” Fine, he means to assure her, but his voice cracks and he can’t speak.

“Here,” she soothes, and before he can protest she’s gone. He was hot before, but at the absence of her body heat, a chill sweeps over him, making him shiver.

Cool fabric presses against his forehead, making him squeeze has eyes shut.

“Mar'i–”

“Aunt Raven said that you might need–”

Her wrist fits perfectly in his hand, his thumb overlapping with his middle finger as he squeezes gently. “Please,” he murmurs, although he isn’t really sure what he’s pleading for.

Her eyes widen with concern but she doesn’t interrupt.

“Just let me look at you.” His fingers loosen around her wrist as he guides her onto the bed, pulling himself into a sitting position with his back against the wall.

Her top teeth worry her bottom lip, and even without pupils he can tell that her gaze is flicking over his face, searching for a sign of illness or whatever else she suspects is wrong with him.

“Close your eyes,” he instructs, and the furrow in her brow deepens but she does.

She’s wearing pajamas, a plain shirt with thin spaghetti straps and plaid shorts. There’s no perfect human, and probably no perfect Tamaranean, but looking at her in the moonlight he can believe that half human, half Tamaraneans are the perfect mix of both. Her hair waves elegantly, giving way to the curve of her breasts, then her waist curves to her hips, and her knees curves to her calves. It’s a perfect series of waves, and it’s oddly comforting to him now. Shapes he can understand.

His eyes drink in their fill and, gently, he reaches for her chin and tilts her head back, leaning closer and raising his other hand to her back to keep her in place.

A sea of deep green meets him as she peeks one eye open, and he presses his lips just over her eyelid. “Keep your eyes closed,” he whispers, stroking his thumb over her chin in a slow circle.

He wants to keep looking at her but if she’s looking back he’ll just get distracted.

She’s beautiful, there’s no way he could ever think otherwise. But that isn’t what’s important. What’s important is that she loves him, and what’s important is that he loves her, and what’s important about that is that it doesn’t change anything.

He lets his hand fall from her back. She loves him. It’s amazing, really. She feels so many things for so many people, so many important and real and warm things for far more people than Damian could imagine, yet she reserves that one piece of her heart for him. How could she ever have begun loving him? And how could she have continued?

How did she fail to realize how toxic he is? He’d killed scores of people before he learned to value life at all. He would do it again, if he had to. He’s broken, and the only thing that makes him feel whole is the woman kneeling patiently in front of him, and she doesn’t mind in the least.

He’s trembling, and he’s too cold and too warm at once. He leans toward her, thinking wildly that kissing her might be like taking a hit from a pipe, breathing her in to heal him from the inside out.

Her skin is fragrant, like fruit or a flower, and it’s what makes him pause. His mouth is so close to hers that they’re living off the same air, and it’s almost hypnotic or addictive.

He sees it before it happens–his fingers stroking over skin, blazing trails over the flat of her stomach as he traces patterns over her shoulders–and he sees decay spread from his fingers, over her flower-petal skin, and it withers where he touches, burned dagger slashes in canvas.

He pants, staring at what he’s about to do, rooted to the spot.

“Damian?”

A strangled cry rises from his throat and he flinches away from her, hitting his head against the heavy wooden headboard. “Don’t touch me,” he warns, and she looks devastated. “You can’t,” he explains, his heart hammering against his ribs. “I’m dead and you–”

She breathes his name, tears shining in her eyes. “You aren’t dead. You know that right?”

“I’m unnatural, diseased, death–”

She leans over him, straddling his hips and reaching for his hands.

“You have to live.” He may be speaking Arabic. The words come out feverish, his breath too hot in his lungs for him to bear. “I’ll kill–”

She silences him by laying her mouth over his, tugging at his hair to tilt his head back. He tries not to breathe–his breath is toxic and she’ll crumble from the inside out–but he hisses into her mouth when she bites down on his bottom lip.

Panicked, he tries to wriggle out from her grip, but she’s too strong.

“Look,” she coos, her voice soothing but ringed with tears. “Damian, I’m fine.”

“No.” Any second her skin will crack like glass and it’ll be his fault

“I am, look. Touch me, Damian, you’ll see.”

She’s tempting him. He wants to touch her, but he’ll ruin her. “Mar'i,” he croaks, and he touches her fingers and runs his hand up her arm. He traces her collarbone, caresses the hollow of her throat. The curve of her breast over her shirt gives way to the muscle of her stomach, and he stops at her hip, the skin peeking out from her shirt warm and smooth.

“I’m sorry.” His voice cracks on the short sentence and he squeezes his eyes shut.

“Damian, I’m fine. See?”

He cracks an eye open. It’s true, ostensibly. She seems as beautiful, as alive, as ever, even with her face shaped by worry.

“I…” His head is beginning to clear suddenly, as though the sight of her fans away a feverish fog. “I’m all right, now.”

She lays a hand on his forehead, pushing his damp hair aside. “You’re still hot. Let me get the cloth.”

“No.” He tugs her by her wrist and she allows him to pull her into place next to him. “I think I’d feel better if you stayed here.”

She settles next to him and he rolls on his side, throwing a hand over her waist to gather her closer.

“Do you know what?” she asks after several minutes of silence.

“What?”

“It was a full moon tonight.”

Damian doesn’t believe–didn’t believe–in things like that, but the square of moonlight that was over them when he first woke up had traveled to a square on the floor, innocent looking. His fingers tighten around her waist but he doesn’t answer.

“We’ll get heavy curtains,” she assures him. “It’ll be better next time.”

“Go to sleep, beloved,” he murmurs.

She laces her fingers through his and brings his hand to her mouth to kiss it before she lets herself drift back to sleep.


	10. Raze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Raze
> 
> Raze: Completely destroy (a building, town, or other site)

The Manor stretches before them, the walls graffitied and the doors slashed with knives. Damian looks on impassively, but Mar’i can hardly stomach it.

Who knows who did this? It wouldn’t have been the big-name criminals. They wouldn’t have spent time on this. Their main goal would have been the batcave.

Damian wrenches the door open. Inside, the Manor is even worse. Everything is smashed. Picture frames are broken on the ground, and a few that couldn’t be yanked from the wall have had the canvas inside slashed.

“It’s awful,” Mar’i says, her voice small.

Damian grunts and wades through the broken vases, glass crunching like snow under booted feet. Sunlight filtering through the broken windows reflects off glass powder littered over the carpet. It’s beautiful, in a horrible way.

The whole house has been damaged. Doors have been broken, some ripped from their hinges. Knives have been dragged over the carpet. Some stairs are even missing—most likely, a couple of thugs got overexcited with an axe—and Mar’i flies Damian up them.

She grabs some of the things that remain from her room. It disturbs her to find that some of her undergarments appear to be missing, and all of her drawers are turned upside down. She grabs as many outfits as she can put together, then she takes some photos from the frames, picking through shards of glass to get them.

Her bed’s been disturbed and Damian tells her not to go near it, and she doesn’t want to know what she’ll find in it. She follows him to his room, which is in way worse shape than hers. His dresser has been tipped, and she has to help him right it before he can rummage through the clothes on the floor. His mattress has been scored with knives, springs showing, and the insides of his pillows have been spread over it like blood. There’s nothing left of his desk and his computer’s been taken, although Proxy took care of that remotely.

He walks over to his closet and kneels, rummaging. If he’s looking for something specific, Mar’i can’t help but think that he’s never going to find it. He stands and tosses her a small object. A tiny box.

“I was planning on giving that to you soon,” he tells her, the first words he’s said since they arrived. “It’s not very appropriate anymore, but you should have it.”

A diamond ring glitters at her, the gold band sunk deep into velvet lining the box.

The sight of it brings tears to her eyes. The future they could have had plays in her mind, a life at the Manor, a wedding full of their friends and family, children.

She stows the box down her shirt. No fitting words come to her mind, and even if she could think of something, Damian isn’t paying attention.

“Do you think the cave’s been broken into?”

“Of course,” he says bitterly.

He’s not in the mood to comfort her, and she shouldn’t have expected anything else. This has to be much harder on him than on her.

Word that Batman is actually Damian Wayne got out a few days ago. The results were catastrophic. Damian pulled as much money as possible out of his bank accounts. He arranged for Lucius Fox and his two daughters to take over Wayne Enterprises. It seemed like a huge loss, but Damian reminded her that he had another foundation under his ownership. The League of Shadows. Mar’i didn’t like the idea of living off money made by assassins, but it didn’t really matter anymore.

She follows him down to the grandfather clock which hides the entrance to the batcave. It had been knocked away, the hidden staircase gaping at them Damian kicks it angrily, but it doesn’t budge.

The small fries must have done that. They wedged the clock this way, off the tracks so it wasn’t able to move but enough that they knew where the entrance was. They’d probably be coming back with explosives.

“Here, move.” She puts a hand on his shoulder to gently push him aside, and she pushes the clock herself, though with great effort.

This would be their last time here. Ever. Damian set to work, tapping at the computer. Eerily, several vehicles—motorbikes, the batmobile, extra cars for use in a civilian identity—turn themselves on and drive themselves.

“That should be at least one per bunker,” he mutters.

He takes the uniforms out of the glass cases, shoving them into a large bag which he gives to Mar’i. He also takes vials of different immunizations and samples of different chemical weapons—fear gas samples, joker gas, Ivy’s poison injections.

He taps on the computer again and his motorcycle turns on in the distance. It pulls up next to Mar’i obediently.

“Say goodbye to the batcave, Mar’i,” he says grimly.

She doesn’t say anything. She clenches her hands into tight fists, but she tries to keep her nerve, like Damian.

He taps at the keyboard again and drags his fingers across the holo-touchscreen. When he finishes, harsh red light fills the cave and a timer shows on every monitor available, including the one on the body of Damian’s bike.

As one last measure, he takes a handful of explosives and throws them at the stone stairs leading down from the clock. It won’t do much, but it should stop anyone who’s wandering around because they’re just curious or stupid.

The explosion sounds and Mar’i turns from it, shielding her eyes from dust and debris but also unable to look at it.

Damian takes Mar’i’s bag and the one he filled and attaches them to the bike on either side of the seat.

She thinks that he’s about to leave, just like that, but without saying a word to her he stalks over to the wall where he hung his collection of weapons. He slings two swords around his shoulders, crisscrossing around his back, and he pockets a few daggers.

Then he goes ballistic. He takes a longsword and he slashes at the practice droid he was in the middle of repairing before any of this started.

Red light glints off the sword and brackish oil spills out as the droid’s head flies off its body, rolling close to Mar’i’s feet. Damian stabs the sword through its body, spraying more oil on the floor and on himself.

Mar’i turns away, giving him a small amount of privacy. She pulls on a leather jacket and a pair of gloves she keeps for motorcycle runs, and she grabs Damian’s jacket, too.

She turns when a clattering sound rings out, and she finds that Damian threw his sword away and started punching the metal husk of the practice droid.

She flies to him and she catches his wrists in a firm grip. He struggles against her, curling his lip back and baring gritted teeth, but he realizes what he was doing and he goes somewhat limp, his head turned to the ground.

She lets him go and he doesn’t move. He looks defeated.

“Damian,” she breathes. “Come on.” She lifts her hand to wipe oil off his cheek, but he catches her as she leans forward and crushes his mouth against hers.

It’s a rough kiss, not really all that pleasant and his fingers tug at her too hard, but she goes soft against him and lets him do it because he needs something to work with him instead of against him.

He pulls back and leans his forehead against hers, panting too roughly for a kiss that wasn’t very romantic.

“Damian,” she soothes, stroking her fingers down his shirt soothingly. “We have to go.”

His eyes snap to the monitor counting down the seconds to the cave self-destruct. She can see the numbers reflected in his eyes.

“Yes,” he agrees. “We’re off to bunker j-13, in case something goes wrong and we get separated.”

He pulls on the jacket she got for him and straddles the bike, tapping on the screen on its body. She gets on behind him, noticing the blood on his knuckles. She’ll wrap his hands when they get to the bunker.

She wants to say something, anything, to assure him that things will get better. But there’s nothing to say, and she isn’t even sure that’s true. He revs the engine and she wraps her arms around him, wrapping her her fingers around her wrist for an anchor, and they leave the batcave for the last time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May eventually delete this chapter and expand upon this idea, I really do love it.


	11. Relapse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Relapse
> 
> (of someone suffering from a disease) Suffer deterioration after a period of improvement)

Damian closed Mar’i’s door behind him, leaning against it until the soft click sounded.

He’d been in here plenty of times before. Sometimes he entered her room unbidden after patrols when the desire to see her was so great that he’d been imagining it between punching crooks in the face. Sometimes he came here after a text explaining a nightmare she’d had. Sometimes he stumbled in while she giggled against his mouth, reaching for the clasp of her brassiere and brushing her hair out of the way.

Today he entered quietly, two thick books against his back and eyes that noticed details but didn’t speculate about them. He noticed the two chairs pushed up against the side of her bed, empty now but tilted in such a way that told him that someone had been here recently enough that Alfred hadn’t gotten the chance to straighten up. He noticed the dark hair that curled against her forehead, slightly damp from sweat, and the rest of it that waved over her pillow and off the mattress. He noticed the IV drip set up next to her bed, but he averted his eyes because it made him uncomfortable.

He pulled up a chair so that he was closer to her face. “Alright, Grayson,” he said clinically. Talking to an unconscious person seemed strange to him, although he’d been doing it for the last few days. “Today I’ve brought a copy of the Tamaranean book your mother gave me, as well as the anthology of Arabic poetry I found bookmarked on your table yesterday.”

Tamaranean was an extremely difficult language, but Mar’i had been teaching him slowly. He was struggling through a book her mother had given him. The language was based on glyphs, phonetic in nature, which was a simple enough concept to understand except that Tamaranean phonics were the most convoluted thing he’d seen since Polish grammar.

When he became frustrated with the Tamaranean book, which happened rather quickly, he switched to the Arabic poetry. After a while, however, he put that down, mostly because he was making himself tired.

“Mar’i,” he murmured. He slid his fingers into her hand, which was warm. “It’s been difficult these past few days. Your father has been insufferable in his temper. Your mother weeps when she believes no one is listening. Father often breaks things when he is not paying attention—pencils, mostly, but two days ago he opened a drawer too quickly and last night he broke a wine glass simply holding it. Alfred has been baking nonstop, to the point of negligence to his other duties.”

He paused to lace his fingers through hers, an odd feeling as her hand was absolutely limp. “And I… In the past few days, I’ve received scores of stitches, a split lip, and a sprained ankle. And, well, I believe I’ve been reading the equivalent of fairy tales in some nonsensical alien language.”

“The others are concerned, of course. Todd has come by every day, even going so far as to use the front door yesterday. Tim and Stephanie stopped in to describe to you the most recent of her sonograms. Cassandra comes by and she sits next to you, although she doesn’t seem inclined to speak while she’s here, as far as I know.”

He stood and pulled her blankets over her more tightly, although she hadn’t appeared to move since the last time they’d been arranged. The gesture was comforting to him.

“Please do not think it selfish of me to ask that you get you get well.”

He was aware that she likely couldn’t hear him. Speaking to her was therapeutic enough that he didn’t feel like a complete imbecile.

“There’s that children’s story about the woman who pricks her finger on a needle and does not wake until a prince rescues her, and the one about the princess and the apple with the same idea that a kiss will wake her.

“I’m not a prince, and I don’t cannot even fathom exactly what it is that I feel for you. There was never any need to define it until now, but perhaps I do love you. It’s selfish of me to realize only now, I suppose.

"I’d like to kiss you, but it isn’t because I think the depth of my own feelings will save you. Wake up when you are ready, Mar’i. I want to kiss you now because it’s been days since I kissed you last and I’m beginning to fear that I won’t be able to do it again. I won’t be able to bear it if I could have kissed you for the last time today and I did not. I suppose that’s selfish.”

He leaned over her and, gently, he touched his lips to hers. Even her lips were hot. The sensation was odd, kissing her when she was not able to reciprocate, and he began to think that perhaps the memory of their previous kiss, in the dim morning half-light as she whispered that he should stay in her bed instead of returning to his own, was better.

It was stupid, but he couldn’t help but check to make sure that she hadn’t suddenly woken, that her fever hadn’t broken, that her eyes weren’t fluttering open.

Of course they weren’t, and he squeezed her fingers as a wave of disappointment broke over him.

“I’ll come back tomorrow to read to you,” he whispered, and he gathered the books as he headed to her door.


	12. Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Memory
> 
> The power of the mind to remember things

Damian sat on his bed, his shins curled to his chest and his chin propped on his knees. Alfred was splayed out next to him and Damian stroked his fingers halfheartedly over his fur. Rain spattered the windows of his apartment, tapping loudly against the pane.

The day was gloomy and Damian didn’t feel very inclined to go anywhere at all.

He and Mar'i had not been broken up for long. The pillow to his right still smelled of her jasmine shampoo, and in fact he was mildly sure she’d left a bottle of it in his shower.

He’d never been through a breakup before. He’d never really been concentrated on girls before, despite insistence from his father that having a girlfriend would help cover his identity. Using another person did not really seem to be a savory activity, and besides it was far too much effort.

There had been girls he’d spent the night with, sure. Just because he wasn’t interested in commitment didn’t mean he was a saint. But when any of those women left, he wasn’t left thinking about them. With Mar'i, she was suddenly all he could think of.

They’d enjoyed a balanced relationship. Tempered, for the most part, and peppered with fits of intense passion. He hadn’t realized what that would do to him after they broke up.

His entire apartment was haunted by the ghost of their relationship. His bedroom was stifling, and he’d almost moved to the couch because he couldn’t take it.

He sighed to himself. Damian Wayne wasn’t going to sit around his apartment and mope in the face of a breakup.

The bathroom wasn’t much better. The simple act of brushing his teeth reminded him of how she’d sometimes pluck the toothbrush out of his hand and kiss him, both their mouths filled with toothpaste. It annoyed him at the time, but now…

He finished brushing his teeth furiously and yanked his clothes off as he turned the water on in the shower. He barely gave it enough time to warm up before stepping in and shoving his head under the spray of warm water.

This… was not better. She left her goddamn shampoo bottle in there, and he picked that up accidentally instead of his. He was so distracted, he didn’t realize it was the wrong brand until he spread it over his hair mistakenly.

He swore and threw the shampoo bottle against the frosted glass door.

He could remember so strongly that he could almost see it–Mar'i stroking sudsy fingers through wet hair, massaging his scalp for him, tugging at his hair to make him tilt his head back so she could press kissed over his neck–

This was not better at all.

He yanked the dial until the water ran cold, finishing his shower in a hurry. The way the day had been going, Damian was in the mood to cancel his lunch appointment, but that was not a good idea, considering.

He grabbed for his clothes, pulling on his jeans and button-down shirt. Out of habit, he stopped buttoning his shirt so that his collar was loose, and it wasn’t until he stopped to ruffle his hair dry with a towel in his hand that he realized what he was doing.

There was no reason to push his sleeves up to the elbows or stop buttoning his shirt halfway when he’d just have to do it later except that Mar'i liked the way it looked. If she hadn’t joined him in the shower, he’d casually walk into the living room this way and she’d run her hands down his down his stomach beneath his shirt, floating to kiss him harder, her mouth soft against his but insistent.

He frowned at his reflection and shook his sleeves into place and buttoned his shirt.

Once he was ready, Damian locked the door behind him and ignored the phantom itch at his hand in the places where Mar'i’s fingers would normally fit.

His lunch appointment was with Dick, actually, and Damian could only guess what he wanted to speak about.

Dick always chose a diner for these sorts of occasions. Damian considered diners beneath him, as they very clearly were, but at the same time it was nice, as no one else ever asked him to come to a simple diner, except Mar'i occasionally but he was too preoccupied with not thinking about her to consider that.

He started off the meal by making pointless small talk. There was a formula to going out to a meal with someone. Small talk, then ordering, then stating the real business, then getting the food, then concluding the point, then pretending to argue over the check. Sometimes if it was an actual business talk, the small talk spilled over into the after-ordering slot, but that was easily made up for by adding coffee and dessert to the meal.

“Look,” Dick said seriously after the waitress took their menus. “I wanted to thank you.”

Damian furrowed his brow suspiciously. “What on earth for?”

“For, you know.” He grimaced. “Breaking it off with Mar'i.”

“She told you,” Damian observed neutrally.

That is not what happened.

What actually happened was that it looked as though Damian was going to need to pick up the cape and cowl sooner than expected and Mar'i did not handle it well. Her worries were legitimate, but it hurt Damian that she would rather break up with him than stick it out. She had always been afraid of the possibility of losing someone in action, but somehow she was convinced that as Batman he’d run into far more danger than as Robin.

She’d left the next morning after they discussed it in a blaze of flaming hair and tears and choked apologies and explanations that she still loved him. Which made the whole situation so much worse to bear.

“Yeah, she did. She was really upset about it, but Damian, I think you made the right choice.”

Groaning internally, Damian raised his gaze to meet Dick’s. He had the approving look of a pleased parent as well as the encouragement and supporting look of an older brother. It was awful.

“She’s plain afraid of the consequences of the cape and cowl. She has been since she was little. I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but you’re protecting her. Things like that have so much more meaning than any relationship could.”

Damian stared at him, oddly horrified, annoyed, and resigned all at once, and he dropped his gaze to the table. “I guess you’re right.”

“You’ll see it soon.”

“Batman’s meant to be alone, anyway,” he muttered sourly.

“Now, D,” Dick began. He was genuinely worried about Damian, but that speech he’d just given was an amalgam of all the worst things anyone could possibly have told him at the moment.

When Damian finally got back home from the torturous lunch appointment with Dick, he didn’t have the energy to do anything other than throw himself on the couch.

He missed her so badly, it was a physical ache. He was like a junkie, he thought with no small sense of horror. If he could just make it through the day, it would start getting easier. It would have to. Maybe a month from now he would be in a place where he didn’t think everything about her was beautiful and perfect, from the way her second toe was longer than her first to the way her hair looked after she unbraided it in the mornings. But for now, he was so tired and filled with such an ache that he leaned his head back against the arm of the couch.

His phone vibrated a few times in his jacket pocket, which he’d slung over the back of the kitchen chair, but he didn’t have the motivation to answer it.

This couch, now that he thought about it, was more imbued with Mar'i than his bed or his goddamn jasmine-scented shower. She’d fallen asleep here on several occasions when she tried and failed to wait for him to get back from patrol on her off-nights. He could see her sitting next to him, wrapped in a thick blanket with a mug of tea at her side as she did her homework.

What’s more, the couch held as many of their romantic moments as his bed, if not then perhaps slightly less.

From where he was now, he could envision her leaning over him to kiss him on the cheek. He’d always direct her into straddling him, pulling her over him by the hips. He could feel her lips against his as she expertly undid the belt on his pants, her hands–

He jolted awake as a knock sounded at his door. He hadn’t meant to drift off, but since he wasn’t working today it wasn’t as though he’d neglected any work.

He cleared his throat and ran a hand through his hair as he swung himself into a sitting position. The knock sounded again and he glowered at the door, but forced himself up to answer it.

“What?” he demanded impatiently, annoyed with the overall situation, since he hadn’t even buzzed anyone into the building.

His eyes widened and his breath caught as his gaze fell on Mar'i. She was squeezing her eyes shut, waiting for him to shout at her. And he meant to, except that when he said her name, it came out in a gentle, hopeful caress.

She stared up at him without speaking, so he ran his hand through his hair once more and said, “Did you forget something?”

“No. I–can I come in?”

His fingers trembled and he gripped at the door handle for support. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

He watched as tears pooled in her eyes. “Damian, I’ve made a mistake.”

His whole body went numb. Did she know what she was doing to him?

“I still don’t know how I’m going to handle it,” she admitted, blinking quickly to keep the tears at bay. “But I don’t want to end things like this. I mean, if you don’t want to speak to me anymore, I totally deserve it. You haven’t been answering your phone so I guess… But I thought I should try, you know? Come and see you one more time?”

Her green eyes were filling with tears, which she brushed away with the back of her wrist.

He wasn’t listening to what she was saying. Not a word. Her hair was soaked from the rain, and he guessed that it was too windy for her hood to stay up. Her trench coat clung to her, rainwater dripping onto the carpet beneath her. Her skirt peeked out from the hem of the coat, soaked and clinging to her legs. She wore rain boots that reached midway up her calf black rubber soled things that he knew she hated.

“You want to continue as though none of this ever happened?” he asked after letting his eyes trail her slowly.

“I–” she stammered. “Obviously we have some things to work out, and you have every right to be seriously angry, but–”

In one quick motion he buried his hand in her wet hair and pressed their mouths together, brushing his tongue against hers as she whimpered into his mouth.

“I’m fine with acting as though this never happened,” he said, his voice low in his throat, and her hair began to steam, which prompted him to pull her into his apartment by the lapels of her coat, kicking the door closed behind him as he connected their mouths and deftly unbuttoned her coat, letting it slide to the floor in a heap.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Dami/Mar'i arguing, please. Bonus for sticking in a sizzling anger kiss sometime!

It was uncomfortable for Damian to be on Tamaran, and Mar’i knew that.

Even so, his temper was nearly unbearable.

He was nothing but sweet to her mother, but that was where he stopped being pleasant about anything. She made sure his food was both vegetarian and edible to humans, as well as palatable, yet he continued to fuss. He complained about the humidity, the odd customs, and most of all the nudity, which was not exactly common in the palace but Tamaraneans did not have swimsuits or pajamas, which continually flustered him to the point that Mar’i contemplated locking him in their room from the second moonrise to sunrise.

They’d come for her mother’s wedding to General Phy’zzon. Mar’i was glad her mother was happy, but seeing her remarry was emotional for her and she wanted some support. Her father understandably opted not to go, and Damian was the next best choice. If he said no, she could have asked Lian or Iris, but they were both uncomfortable about Tamaranean traditions, and it would be strange for the princess to arrive with a guest with whom she was not romantic.

He’d said yes, but begrudgingly and only after she worked up some tears. He wasn’t fond of being away from Gotham for two weeks, even with the assurance that Colin would pick up his patrol route and shifts.

The culture obviously ground on his nerves, as well, but at least he didn’t say that outright.

The ceremony had ended—her mother and Phy’zzon mixed their energies under the light of the joined moons—and the party wasn’t set to end until sunrise, which Damian complained was much too long for a wedding reception and which she ignored.

Damian’s mood had been declining since the ceremony ended. She’d gotten him to dance with her, but it was obvious that his mind was somewhere else.

She was temporarily distracted from his poor humor at midnight, when she left his side to take part in the ritual dance performed at events attended by the royal families of Tamaran.

When she returned, his mood was downright cranky. He snapped at her and he refused to dance, and after a few minutes she dragged him out of the opulent ballroom into the hallway, which was a ceiling supported by French door-styled arches that served as walls and opened into the humid night.

“Quit dragging me, woman,” he muttered, attempting to wrench his wrist out of her grasp.

“In a minute. I’m trying to get far away enough so that I can shout at you with interruption.”

“Tt.” He continued to try to wriggle his wrist out of the cage of her fingers, but they reached a suitable distance before he came close to success.

“What the hell is your problem?” she demanded, releasing his wrist as the approached the huge fountain that separated the ballroom from the main area of the palace.

“Currently? Crazed half-aliens dragging me about.”

She rolled her eyes so hard that she almost gave herself a headache. “You’ve been insufferable all night. Did you eat something without asking me first?”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Yes, my mood is directly affected by my gastrointestinal—”

“Seriously, stop with the sarcasm. Can’t we have a conversation like normal people?”

“Mar’i,” he said, exasperated, “you’ve brought me light years from my home and I’m wearing a glorified loincloth. I don’t believe I will even be able to truthfully say the word normal for the rest of my life.”

“Is that what’s bugging you?” she demanded. “You’re pissed because I’m not normal?”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Of course not.”

“Then what is it? Please tell me what I can do do to appease you until we get back home, because I’m really sick of your attitude.”

The only answer he gave was to glare at her.

“If you want to sulk out here, that’s fine. I’ll see if Marras wants to dance or something.”

She turned away from him, but a too-tight grip on her wrist yanked her back.

“I don’t want you talking to him anymore,” he growled, allowing her to face him but keeping his grip uncomfortably tight.

“Woah, hold on a minute. Is this whole thing about Marras? —Damian, you’re hurting my—”

“Dammit,” he swore, and he took her other wrist in his hand, his grip gentler but still squeezing. “I’m not like them, Mari,” he snarled as though she should have been able to instinctively know what was bothering him. “Why did you bring me here, anyway? I can’t even eat half this food, I have no idea what anyone’s saying—”

Her anger diffused into annoyed worry, and she tried to shake his grip off her wrists. “Wait, calm down a little—”

“And all you’re worried about is dancing with princes—”

She pursed her lips angrily and she took a large step back, yanking her arms closer to her torso and pulling Damian with her.

They fell into the deep pool that fed the fountain, Mar’i’s skirt billowing out in the water around them before sinking as the fabric absorbed water.

Damian released her wrists and thrashed to the surface of the pool, coughing up water. Mar’i floated to him quietly. He was fine, if a little miffed, and she took his hands and pulled him to a shallower part of the fountain so they could stand.

“Don’t do that again,” he snapped, shaking water out of his hair.

“You were freaking out and implying that I brought you so I could poison you and cheat on you with an engaged Prince,” she pointed out, her voice soothing.

He sighed and pushed his fingers through his wet hair, staring at the rippling fabric of Mar’i’s skirt beneath the water. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and touched the hair at the back of his head, heating her fingers to help dry it. “You don’t really think that I’m interested in Marras, do you?”

“No,” he admitted sulkily.

“Then why have you been so obnoxious all week?”

“I’ve not been obnoxious,” he retorted, which she met with raised eyebrows. “It—there are several aspects of a Tamaranean relationship I will never be able to give you. The wedding ceremony… exchanging of solar energy…” He raised his gaze to hers, his blue eyes bright and sorrowful under the light of the double moons. “I’m not like them.”

Making an annoyed sound at the back of her throat, she shoved him until his back hit the wall of the pool and arched her throat to kiss him.

“I’m not like them either, you doofus,” she told him.

He tangled his fingers into the wet hair at the back of her head, pulling her close for a rough kiss. He tugged at her hair and bit at her bottom lip, surprising her with his roughness.

“Oh! Mar’i?”

She leaned back enough to look up at her mother, her arm looped around Phy’zzon’s.

“That is not the intended use of the fountain,” Kory pointed out in a worried mom-voice.

“X’hal, Mom, I know.”

“At first moonset we're serving dessert. Perhaps you should change out of your wet clothes in preparation.”

“Okay,” Mar’i answered, biting back a laugh at Damian’s embarrassed expression. “In a minute.”

Mercifully, Kory directed Phy’zzon back into the ballroom to give them privacy.

Mar'i leaned forward to kiss Damian quickly and offered him her hand to pull him out of the fountain.

“So are we okay now?” she asked hopefully as she steered him in the direction of the main palace, toward their room.

He grunted an affirmation and tugged at her hand. “As long as you do not drop me in any more pools.”

“Deal,” she said, beaming and lacing his fingers through hers.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Kiss along the hips

Mar'i sighed against Damian’s mouth as she yanked on his tie, loosening it enough to comfortably undo the topmost button of his button down shirt.

“What’s gotten into you?” he asked, keeping the breathiness out of his voice by sheer power of will as she peppered kisses over his jaw.

“You know I hate those events,” she answered, trailing her fingers over the bare skin of his abdomen. “And don’t think I didn’t notice you, being all moody and possessive.”

“I was not–” His protest died in his throat as Mar'i pressed a kiss over his pectoral muscle on his chest, following the path of her fingers with her mouth.

“Hm,” she hummed, amused. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you glaring at Bobby Vance while I was dancing with him. Not that there’s any reason, I don’t think he’s into me.”

“Tt,” Damian muttered as he propped himself up on one elbow and loosened his tie further, moving minimally in order not to discourage Mar'i’s progress across his torso. “Any man in his right mind would be ‘into’ you, Grayson.”

“Maybe,” she allowed, curling her fingers into the pockets of his dress pants and stopping to press kisses over the ridges of abdominal muscle. “Unless they’re into you.”

“Ah. I see your point.” He swallowed back a groan as she let her tongue touch against his skin. “Mar'i, might I remind you of the proximity of your father’s quarters…”

“Keep quiet, then,” she advised, pressing her lips against the winged arch of his his hip where it met his abdomen. She tightened her fingers around around the fabric of his pockets, making her way across the tense muscles above the waistband of his pants, leaving the warm imprint of her soft lips in her wake.

Decidedly through with her teasing, he wound his fingers into her hair above her ears, pulling her face up so that they were eye level to each other.

“I hope you can remember your own advice,” he said, a wicked smile pulling at his mouth as he pushed the strap of her dress off her shoulder.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Romantic Kiss

Snow whirled through frozen air, soft flakes and powder from what had freshly fallen to the ground swept up in curling wind.

Damian watched the scenic display through the glass walls of the greenhouse on the grounds of Wayne Manor, two mugs of tea warming his numb fingers painfully. To be nestled in the warmth of the heated greenhouse while so closely watching the snow dissolve into the wind felt a bit odd, and he wondered if it was how Mar’i felt on cold days such as these. Her body heated itself, thanks to her Tamaranean solar abilities, which must have given her the detached, awed feeling he was experiencing now.

He stowed the thought in his mind for later reflection when a burst of dark hair and golden fingers pushing it back appeared between two rows of vibrant green.

Adjusting the mugs of tea in his grip, Damian padded over to where she was, the foreign, dark earth that covered this part of the greenhouse soft beneath his boots and quieting his approach.

“Mar’i,” he muttered as he closed the distance between them. The space was quiet and warm, sounds dampened by the rich Tamaranean soil and punctuated by the low, out of place whistle of wind against the glass walls. It made the quiet murmur of her name on his lips seem impossibly intimate, the caress of the syllables on his tongue reminiscent of the caress of her body against his hands.

She turned quickly, pleasantly startled, solid green eyes widened and soft, purple lips curved into a smile. “Damian,” she greeted, the softness of his name on her lips, along with the quiet tinkle of laughter in the back of her throat, making his face heat up.

“It’s warm in here,” he said without thinking. “That is, I brought a warm beverage, but it hardly seems necessary now.”

She floated slightly until she was high enough off the ground to stretch her legs out and stand. Stretching her back and her arms languidly, similar to a cat, Damian thought, she shook her head. “Maybe it’s not not necessary, but it certainly is appreciated.” She held out an arm, fingers curled slightly and prepared to cradle a mug.

He passed her one—they both liked their tea black, so it didn’t matter which—and she cupped it with both hands and lifted it to her lips.

“It’s very hot—” he warned, but his words went unnoticed by the half-Tamaranean who sipped heartily at the steaming liquid.

“Mmm,” she hummed, pleased, and she pulled the mug against her chest. “Thanks!”

“Of course.” He tipped his own mug against his lips, taking a careful sip, but the water was still much too hot for comfortable consumption and he burned the tip of his tongue. Grunting, he kneeled to place the mug on one of the stones set against the soil meant to act as a path.

The plant in front of him, a flower whose petals curled delicately at the pointed tips and whose leaves hung in spiraling ringlets, caught his attention.

“What sort of plant is this?” Damian asked, tilting his head at the plant.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, surprised at his interest. “That’s a virubla flower. It’s a shame it’s so cloudy—they hum when moonlight touches them. The petals glow when it gets dark, too.”

“Hm. I’m sure it’s lovely.”

“Lots of Tamaranean plants are luminescent, but the virubla is my favorite.” Excited, Mar’i pushed herself into the air, landing nimbly next to Damian and narrowly avoiding spilling her tea which she still held in one hand.

The virubla flowers sprouted among a dense netting of their own spiraling leaves, the vibrant petals poking through a blanket of dark green. Gingerly, she plucked a small, bright blue flower and held it between herself and Damian.

“Sniff,” she instructed, her eyelashes brushing against her brow bone as she looked up at him.

He eyed her carefully before bowing his head and inhaling.

“Describe the scent,” she encouraged, adjusting the flower in her fingers so the tips of the petals curled between them.

“Odd. It smells of jasmine and sword polish and… sand.” Meeting her gaze, he wrapped his fingers around the wrist of the hand holding the flower and tugged her closer under the guise of looking at the blossom more closely.

“The virubla flower mimics scents that are pleasing to whoever inhales it.”

“Interesting. What sorts of things do you smell?”

He watched as she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, her top and bottom eyelashes curling against each other and her chest rising as she inhaled, chin tipping upward as she contemplated the scent.

“I smell zorkaberries, and vanilla, and the ocean.” Her eyes fluttered open, a smile on her lips. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Slightly embarrassed, Damian dropped his gaze to the flower curling over Mar’i’s fingers and he lifted it gently out of her palm. Wordlessly, he placed the short end of the stem she’d snapped off among her own curls, tucking it in place.

With the hand not holding her mug of tea, she tugged him closer by the fabric of his sweatshirt.

Her lips tasted like tea, and as her hair brushed against his cheek, he caught the scent of the virubla flower. It was a sensory overload, and all thoughts outside of kissing went hazy. He crushed her against him eagerly.

They were both startled out of their daze at the sound of liquid slapping against stone. Distracted by the kiss, Mar’i had let her hand go limp and tea spilled out of the mug.

“Sorry,” she said, laughing nervously. “Anyway, do you want to see some more flowers? There’s a kind that Tamaraneans use for tea. It’s sweet, so I don’t know how much you’d like it.”

Rolling his eyes, he plucked the mug out of her hands. “Show me,” he said, taking a shallow sip of what was left.

A wide grin lit up Mar’i’s features. “Okay!” Winding her fingers through his, she began pulling him to the next row of plants.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alfred discovers the true nature of Damian and Mar'i's relationship.

Alfred balanced a plate of waffles, orange juice, a protein shake, the usual dose of painkillers for all who lived in this house, several pieces of fruit, and silverware and a napkin on a round tray.

Since Damian’s official graduation from college, a mandate from his father which was met with much complaint from the young man, his father had been giving him more and more responsibilities at Wayne Enterprises, and he was expected there in an hour and a half for an important meeting. Damian was not a heavy sleeper, but he liked to stay in bed until Alfred was forced to pull the covers off his bed so he forewent knocking and pushed the door open.

“Good morning, Master Damian. I trust you remember—”

Alfred found himself struck by a rare moment of genuine surprise, although the moment was fleeting and he was able to hide his surprise with little more than a raise of his eyebrows.

In the large bed draped with fine linen was not just Damian, but the familiar inky-haired, gold-skinned form of Mar’i Grayson, clothed in what appeared to be an extra shirt of Damian’s. The two of them were settled close together and it was hardly a stretch of the imagination to picture them curled against one another as they slept.

Seeing them together was a shock initially, but looking back with the information he now had, it was easy for Alfred to see details he’d overlooked previously—times when both of them had been absent from meals, lingering glances shared between them, the slight adjusting of patrol routes organized by Damian that placed them near each other.

“Alfred!” Damian exclaimed in a startled gasp. He’d pushed himself into a sitting position, instinctively angling himself between Alfred and Mar’i. A poor attempting at shielding her from him, but perhaps if she wore her pendant and disguised ger skin, he wouldn’t have been able to tell it was her so immediately.

“I trust you remember this morning’s meeting,” Alfred said calmly, averting his eyes from the red mark on Damian’s bare chest and placing the tray of food on the heavy wooden desk. He approached the thick curtains on the windows and pulled them open, making both occupants of the bed throw their hands over their eyes to block the sun.

“I—forgot—”

“Apparently, sir.” Nodding at Mar’i as she sat up, looking terribly guilty, he asked,“Will you be needing another tray, Mistress Mar’i?”

“No!” she squeaked, and she pulled her hair over her shoulder as the ends caught fire. Shooting him an apologetic look, she said, “No Alfred, thank you.”

“Pennyworth,” Damian began, throwing the coverlet to the side and throwing his legs over the side of the bed.“Please—Not mentioning what you’ve seen would—”

“Sir, please do not act as though this is the first time I have walked in on a Wayne entertaining a lady.”

He nodded, his cheeks flushing deep red and averting his eyes.

“I’ll return in one half-hour to collect the tray, sir.”

“Yes, thank you.”

Alfred closed the door behind him, smiling to himself, a private gesture he allowed himself at the unexpected turn of events.

“Why wouldn’t you lock the door?” he heard Mar’i demand from inside, answered by a muttered apology.

Alfred had a difficult time smothering his smile as he made his way back to the kitchen to prepare a plate for Bruce.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: AU where Mar'i dresses as a Disney princess at Disney World?

Damian adjusted his hat and swiped his hand over the sweat beading at his forehead as his little half-sister pulled him merrily through the crowds.

“Look, Dami, another princess!” Helena gasped as though they haven’t stopped for a dozen autographs already, and she dug into her Minnie Mouse themed backpack for the autograph book filled with fake signatures.

Glad to have his hand to himself instead of tightly wrapped around Helena’s, he wiped his sweaty fingers on his jeans, vaguely annoyed. The ‘princess’—Jasmine from Aladdin, this time—was crouching to Helena’s level by the time he decided to take any interest in his little sister’s excitement.

As ‘Jasmine’ touched Helena’s Minnie Mouse headband, Damian couldn’t help but watch the fluid way she moved, the way her bound hair reflected the sweltering Florida sun—he would almost swear it wasn’t a wig.

“Brother!” Helena shouted, and ‘Jasmine’ noticed him for the first time, her green eyes crinkling with curiosity and maybe a hint of something else as she took him in. “Take a picture!”

As he held the camera out in front of him, he got the distinct feeling that the smile ‘Jasmine’ gave was meant not for the closed pages of Helena’s scrapbook, when she completed it, but that it was especially for him.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Hogwarts AU

Mar’i sighed, tired, and wiped the back of her wrist over her forehead, then rested it on her hip. “You know,” she said, careful to keep her tone neutral, “some people can’t conjure a Patronus. We’ve been at this for hours.”

His green and silver tie was loose around his neck, his sleeves pushed messily to his elbows and his shirt coming untucked at the bottom. “I’ll do it,” Damian said through gritted teeth, well past annoyed at himself. “I can.”

The Gryffindor fellow seventh year shrugged and sat on one of the empty desks, the moonlight reflected in her glossy black hair. “Whatever, Wayne. At a Galleon an hour, take as long as you’d like.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, annoyed. Mar’i had been among the first of the small group of students to achieve a Patronus Charm in class earlier that day, and Damian had been among a handful of students who hadn’t even gotten a puff of silvery-white smoke out of the tip of his wand. He hadn’t wanted to ask for help, but Mar’i was the only person he knew wouldn’t blab about the arrangement if he asked her not to, and being unsuccessful was simply not an option.

She’d been kind—too kind, really, and she only got kinder as his frustration deepened and his temper worsened. It made him angry.

He approached her angrily and put a hand on the desk where she sat, narrowing his eyes, channeling all his frustration into making stop being so bloody kind to him.

“And at a Galleon an hour,” he hissed, and he could see strands of her hair move as his breath disturbed it, “I’d better get some results soon.”


End file.
